Bulgarian Armed Forces Day Marked at Military Cemetery in North Macedonia

Valentin Evstatiev, Vladislav Tentov, Magdalena Dimitrova

The holiday of the Bulgarian Armed Forces is marked with a ceremony at the Bulgarian military cemetery in Novo Selo, in the Strumica River Valley in North Macedonia. May 6, 2025 (BTA Photo/Vladislav Tentov)

Novo Selo, North Macedonia,

06.05.2025 17:33

(BTA)

The holiday of the Bulgarian Armed Forces on May 6 was marked with a ceremony at the Bulgarian military cemetery in Novo Selo, in the Strumica River Valley in North Macedonia.

The event was attended by Bulgarian Ambassador in Skopje Zhelyazko Radukov, Petrich Mayor Dimitar Brachkov, members of the Bulgarian National Guard, the military attaches of the embassies of Italy, Romania, Turkiye, Ukraine, China and Hungary in North Macedonia, Bulgarian Defence Ministry Social Policy and Patriotic Education Director Lyudmil Mihailov, representatives of Bulgarian cultural associations in North Macedonia, students and staff members of 17 Bulgarian schools, and many other cultural and public figures and officials from the two countries.

The ceremony started to the strains of the national anthems of Bulgaria and North Macedonia and the anthem of Europe, played by the brass band of the Lyubomir Pipkov National School of Music in Sofia.

Metropolitan Naum of Strumica and Archpriest Vicar Pavel Milushev of Petrich officiated a memorial service.

The memorial at the Bulgarian military cemetery in Novo Selo was restored in 2006 and has since been maintained with funding provided by Milen Vrabevski, Founder and Chairman of the Bulgarian Memory Foundation. The cemetery is the final resting place of 71 Bulgarian officers and soldiers from 11th Macedonian-Adrianople Volunteer Infantry Division and 2nd Thracian Infantry Division who died in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and World War I (1914-1918). The Bulgarian Memory Foundation organizes annual commemorative events there.

Fifteen of the Bulgarian soldiers buried at Novo Selo were born in present-day North Macedonia (including two in Novo Selo), another three were from Aegean Macedonia, two from a region in Serbia known today in Bulgaria as the Western Outlands, and one each from Eastern Thrace, Kosovo and Northern Dobdudzha. There are also three Serbs, one of whom was a prisoner of war and the other two served with the gendarmerie.

The Novo Selo cemetery is one of more than 450 Bulgarian military burial sites in North Macedonia. It was built after World War I.

/VE/