John Vatatzes wrote that the Tsar of the Bulgarians, Samuel, had built, approximately 1,000 years ago, the church of Saint Achilles on an islet in Little Prespa and that the lakes of Ohrid and Prespa were in the heart of his kingdom. He mentioned that Professor Nikolaos Moutsopoulos had found the bones of Samuel in 1965 on Greek soil and that they were kept in Thessaloniki. According to Vatatzes, Greece was asking Bulgaria to return thousands of relics and manuscripts that, he claimed, had been looted from monasteries in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace during the occupation of the area in 1917. He also noted that the Treaty of Neuilly provided for their return and that in 2014, during the premiership of Antonis Samaras, it had been agreed to return approximately 2,000 relics, without Greece agreeing to relinquish the rest. He himself accused Kyriakos Mitsotakis of giving Bulgaria the bones of Samuel in 2026, which he described as being of inestimable historical and ideological value to the Bulgarians, in exchange for just 48 relics. He compared the move to Alexis Tsipras's concession of the name Macedonia in 2018 and argued that Greece had now lost its bargaining tool for the return of the remaining relics. #Ελλάδα #Ιστορία #Μακεδονία (translated)
