MI6 Coup in Macedonia Unravels

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On May 12th, this journalist documented the labyrinthine Western-orchestrated machinations via which Macedonia - under the locally-despised name of North Macedonia - was forcibly enrolled in NATO, despite widespread public opposition. Absent from that investigation was reference to the central role played in these connivances by British intelligence. Namely, London’s ambassador to Skopje and lifetime MI6 operative, Charles Garrett. Now troublesome VMRO-DPMNE is returned to office, it is vital his activities in the country are re-examined.

Charles Garrett receives an award from King Charles

As The Grayzone has previously documented, London operates a dedicated program known as “Global Britain” in the West Balkans. Leaked documents related to the effort reveal it is concerned with insidiously influencing the composition of local governments and legal and regulatory environments to advance British interests, while filling regional security, intelligence, and military forces with handpicked assets. As one leaked file makes clear, MI6 does not tolerate regional opposition to its agenda, readily deploying active measures to neutralise any and all local resistance:

“In contexts where elite incentives are not aligned with [Britain’s] objectives/values…an approach that seeks to hold elite politicians to account might be needed…We can build relationships and alliances with those who share our objectives and values for reform…It is critical that the media have the capacity and freedom to hold political actors to account.”

Events in Macedonia over the past decade provide a brutal demonstration of what can befall governments and officials in the Balkans who do not share Britain’s “objectives” and “values”, and how they are “held to account.” So too does a 2020 coup in Kyrgyzstan, where Garrett set up shop after leaving Skopje. With Central Asia now in the crosshairs of London’s endless quest for “reform” overseas, it’s never been more vital to beware Brits bearing gifts.

‘Colorful Revolution’

Following Russia’s March 2014 reunification with Crimea, NATO’s efforts to expand in the Former Yugoslavia became turbocharged. The Grayzone has previously reported how alliance membership was imposed upon Montenegro, despite near-universal public opposition, in 2016. Achieving this feat required sustaining a corrupt, savage pro-Western dictator in power for three decades, and an elaborate connivance whereby anti-NATO opposition actors were jailed on bogus charges of colluding with Russian intelligence to overthrow the government, based on counterfeit CIA and MI6-supplied evidence.

Similar subterfuge played out in Skopje, which signed a “Membership Action Plan” with NATO in 1999. While slightly more supportive of NATO membership than Montenegrins, the local population near-unanimously opposed changing the country’s name, which Greece, the EU and US made a prerequisite for joining. The VMRO government, led by Nikola Gruevski, pledged Macedonia would always be called Macedonia. So a Western-orchestrated coup was put into motion.

In February 2015, pro-Western opposition party SDSM’s leader Zoran Zaev began regularly dropping what he and the media branded “bombs”. These were deeply damaging wiretaps of private conversations between prominent Macedonian officials, businesspeople, journalists, and judges. The tapes seemingly implicated Gruevski and his ministers in serious crimes, including murder. Zaev claimed the illegally-captured recordings were passed to him by whistleblowers. The premier countered that the releases were supplied by foreign intelligence services, with the objective of forcing an early election.

Subsequent investigations exposed how SDSM deceptively edited and spliced these leaked recordings to grossly distort their contents, and falsely incriminate government officials. For example, one “bomb” was extensively doctored to make it sound like VMRO leaders conspired to cover up the 2011 murder of a young Macedonian in Skopje by a senior police officer, while shielding them from justice. The unexpurgated tape revealed they were in fact shocked by the killing, and wanted the culprit to be severely punished.

It was not until four years later that the truth was revealed, however. Upon release, Zaev’s “bombs” sparked widespread outcry in Macedonia, prompting hundreds of thousands of citizens to take to the streets, voicing righteous rage at VMRO. Openly called the “colorful revolution” by participating citizens and NGOs, and English language media, the EU and US duly stepped in and brokered the Przino Agreement, under which Gruevski resigned, and new elections were held.

SDSM scraped into office via a fragile coalition, then set about laying the foundations of Macedonia’s name change in explicit service of NATO membership, with tens of millions of dollars in assistance from intelligence cutout USAID. Parliamentarians were blackmailed - frequently using the illegal wiretap intercepts - and bribed into passing unconstitutional and highly controversial reforms, allowing Skopje to be rebranded North Macedonia without public support, or even the President’s signoff. A sham referendum, boycotted by most citizens, was also cynically staged.

At last, North Macedonia was formally inducted into NATO in March 2020. Alliance officials have since repeatedly made clear they consider Bosnia and Herzegovina joining to be inevitable. This is despite 98% of Bosnian Serbs opposing membership, due to NATO’s central role in the criminal destruction of Yugoslavia during the 1990s. There are covert British efforts to promote NATO in Serbia too, despite over 80% of the population opposing joining.

‘Charlie’s Angels’

In August 2013, Charles Garrett was appointed Britain’s ambassador to Macedonia. His express brief was to help the country “achieve its goals of joining NATO and the EU.” Multiple local sources have informed this journalist Garrett was instrumental in the “colorful revolution,” distributing cash to NGOs and activists involved in the unrest from his diplomatic pouch and encouraging them to cause mass havoc on Skopje’s streets, while attempting to get government supporters on board. 

Public records strongly suggest Garrett is a lifetime MI6 officer. His lengthy career in London’s diplomatic service includes spells in Cyprus, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Taiwan, all key nuclei of intelligence gathering and cloak-and-dagger action for Britain’s foreign spying agency. He was also posted to the Balkans in the latter half of the 1990s, when the region became a veritable MI6 playground. 

Under the Przino Agreement, a Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) was created to investigate officials over serious crimes, supposedly revealed by the illegal wiretap intercepts. A previously unknown prosecutor from a small Macedonian border town, Katica Janeva, was selected to run the Office. While the SPO was supposed to prosecute SDSM figures - including Zaev, for releasing the intercepts - this never materialized. Meanwhile, any and all Western officials visiting Macedonia made sure to visit SPO headquarters, and get snapped with Janeva. Garrett was, of course, among them.

Charles Garrett and Katica Janeva

Initially, Western journalists treated Janeva to multiple fawning profiles. The British media was particularly smitten. The Financial Times referred to her as Macedonia’s “Beyonce”. The BBC dubbed the Special Prosecutor and her two primary assistants “Charlie’s Angels”, describing the trio as “the scourge of Macedonia’s political elite and heroines of the street protests now rocking the tiny Balkan nation.” A lengthy USAID-funded “documentary” featured her staff mocking their targets via phone, between discussing who to jail next, over pizza and cigarettes.

That broadcast has since been removed from the web, and virtually no trace of its existence can be found online today. This may be because in June 2020, Janeva was jailed for seven years for corruption. Her crime-fighting crusade was from inception an obscene, partisan fraud. Along the way, the Special Prosecutor secretly enriched herself through a variety of unscrupulous, criminal means. The SPO’s true objective was neutralising VMRO, while discrediting its supporters by association.

Janeva’s targets were often indicted on farcical charges. For example, at one stage Prime Minister Gruevski was accused of “abuse of office” for commissioning the construction of two “Chinese highways”. Prosecutors charged he had improperly benefitted from the deal - not financially, but because he would “receive a popularity boost” if the highways were completed on schedule. Elsewhere, a pro-VMRO female journalist was accused of tax fraud for writing off laundry as a business expense, then subjected to much misogynistic mockery in SDSM-affiliated media.

More gravely, the owner of an independent news site committed suicide after being pressured to turn state witness by the SPO, following early morning police raids targeting him and his family. Cases brought against the owners of VMRO-supporting TV stations Sitel and Nova shifted their editorial line in favor of SDSM, before the latter was closed outright. In its place, the rabidly pro-SDSM 1TV was launched by eccentric Macedonian media personality Bojan Jovanovski, also known as Boki 13.

Publicly, Boki 13 used his station to relentlessly promote the SDSM-led government and the SPO’s work, with Janeva a frequent guest on its assorted “factual” and entertainment programs. In private, he extorted wealthy businesspeople indicted by the Special Prosecutor, or somehow caught up in the illegal intercepts, promising to make their legal troubles vanish in return for lavish advertising buys on 1TV, or sizable donations to his “charity”, International Association. None other than Charles Garrett sat on its board.

‘Fifth Column’

By the time these facts became public knowledge, Janeva and Boki 13 were in prison. Meanwhile, Garrett was safely extracted from Skopje, having been appointed British ambassador to Kyrgyzstan. Almost immediately, a revolution erupted in Bishkek. Mass demonstrations, ignited by reports of vote rigging in the country’s October 2020 parliamentary election, culminated with the military storming President Sooronbay Jeenbekov’s compound and removing him - physically - from office.

Kyrgyzstan’s 2020 ‘revolution’

In February 2022, a Kyrgyzstan government-affiliated newspaper openly accused Garrett of operating a “fifth column” in Bishkek. It alleged that in the leadup to the 2020 vote, he along with US State Department representatives met with local journalists and bloggers, offering them enormous sums to identify electoral violations - such as vote rigging - and document official pressure on media outlets and civil society groups. Garrett purportedly promised them top-of-the-range broadcasting equipment, to increase their audience reach. Not long after publication, he returned to London.

Garrett has kept a low profile ever since, now occupying a cushy role overseeing the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Nonetheless, in September 2023, he submitted written evidence to a British parliamentary committee investigating London’s “engagement in Central Asia”. Garrett advocated a number of means of exploiting “disruption caused by Moscow’s renewed invasion of Ukraine” to undermine the region’s historic, economic and political ties with Russia and China, to “shape the future of these countries” according to Britain’s interests.

When British Foreign Secretary David Cameron conducted a much-publicised tour of Central Asia in May 2024, he followed Garrett’s proposals to the letter. The ambassador’s legacy visibly endures in Macedonia today too. In March 2016, colorful revolution protesters attempted to burn down the President’s office in Skopje, after 56 individuals indicted by the SPO were pardoned. The premises subsequently transformed into the headquarters of UK Aid, a now-defunct British government agency intimately implicated in the neoliberal rape and pillage of Ukraine.

The Skopje headquarters of UK Aid

This included running covert communications campaigns on Kiev’s behalf, promoting the destruction of workers’ rights locally. It is likely the organisation was engaged in similar skullduggery in Skopje, after Garrett rode into town. VMRO’s return to government at last offers Macedonians the opportunity to halt operations of all US and British intelligence fronts and cutouts operating on their soil, and reclaim foreign-conquered territory.