North Macedonia

North Macedonia is a landlocked Balkan country bordered by Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Greece and Bulgaria. Skopje is the capital and largest city. Macedonian, a South Slavic language, is the official language, and since 2019 Albanian has been co-official at state level for the large Albanian minority.

In antiquity the land matched the regions of Paeonia and Pelagonia, which Philip II of Macedon absorbed into his kingdom in 356 BC, and Rome made it part of the province of Macedonia in 146 BC. Slavic tribes settled from the 6th century and became Christian under the First Bulgarian Empire, when the Ohrid Literary School flourished. Tsar Samuel ruled from Ohrid until Byzantium defeated his armies in 1014, and in the 14th century Skopje served as capital of the Serbian ruler Stefan Dušan. The Ottomans then held the region for five centuries.

After the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 Serbia took most of the territory. In December 1944 the Anti-fascist Assembly ASNOM proclaimed a Macedonian republic within Yugoslavia, and a referendum on 8 September 1991 backed independence. The country stayed out of the Yugoslav wars, and the Ohrid Agreement of 2001 widened minority rights. Under the Prespa Agreement with Greece it took the name North Macedonia in 2019, and it joined NATO in March 2020. It is a parliamentary democracy with a unicameral Assembly, the Sobranie.

The Vardar River runs through a central valley framed by mountains, and Mount Korab on the Albanian border rises to 2,764 m (9,068 ft). Lakes Ohrid, Prespa and Dojran draw most visitors. The economy suffered from Yugoslav sanctions and a Greek trade embargo in 1994 and 1995, after which Greek firms bought the Okta oil refinery, a marble mine at Prilep and textile plants in Bitola. Wheat, tobacco and poppy appear on its coat of arms.