BELGRADE: Russia’s foreign minister said Friday that Moscow was worried about the stability of Macedonia and the whole Balkans region after a recent eruption of deadly violence there.

“The latest events in Macedonia are very worrying... as well as terrorist tendencies emerging in the Balkans,” Sergei Lavrov told reporters in the Serbian capital.

“We believe that those events reflect an unstable situation in that country and the Balkans ... it is (the) implementation of well prepared, planned and executed terrorist acts.”

Lavrov’s comments followed a shooting in the northern Macedonian town of Kumanovo nearly a week ago that left 22 people dead including eight police officers.

The incident came amid a political crisis in the country, with an ongoing struggle between Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and main opposition party leader Zoran Zaev that has sparked clashes in the streets of the capital Skopje.

Tensions are rising ahead of further protests at the weekend to demand that the government resigns, following allegations made by Zaev that the ruling party wiretapped 20,000 people, including politicians and journalists.

While the weekend violence between ethnic Albanian rebels and Macedonian police was the worst in the country for 14 years, the EU has warned that it should not distract attention from Macedonia’s “very serious internal political situation” nor be used “to introduce ethnic tensions.” But Lavrov, who spoke after meeting his Serbian counterpart Ivica Dacic, criticized Brussels’ attitude toward the Balkans.

“The need for concrete action cannot be replaced by political correctness,” he said.

Lavrov said the latest developments “occur as the Macedonian government refuses to join sanctions (imposed by EU against Russia over the Ukrainian crisis) and supports the Turkish Stream project.”

Russian energy giant Gazprom announced earlier this month that the Turkish Stream pipeline would start operating in December 2016, designed to offer an alternative to shipping Russian gas via Ukraine.