Police: Gruevski fled to Hungary via Albania and Montenegro

Macedonia has in the meantime issued an arrest warrant for the former prime minister, who has been sentenced to two years in prison for abuse of office during the purchase of an armored Mercedes car, while Gruevski is now seeking political asylum in Hungary.

Both his private and diplomatic passports had been seized by authorities in Skopje last year - so the question now remained of how he managed to reach Hungary at all.

Belgrade-based daily Politika writes that it learned Gruevski used a fake passport to cross the border from Macedonia into Albania by night, and illegally enter Tirana, where he was accepted by employees of the Hungarian embassy.

Then he took the first morning flight that the Malev carrier runs between Tirana and Budapest, and once in the Hungarian capital, sought asylum.

According to the newspaper, Gruevski "wore a disguise" while on the airplane - a pair of sunglasses and a hat - and the crew were unaware of the identity of the passenger - "because he did not remove either the sunglasses or the hat during the whole flight."

By the time the arrest warrant against him came into force, around 10:00 CET, Gruevski was already in Budapest.

The office of Hungarian PM Viktor Orban on Tuesday confirmed that Gruevski had applied for asylum, seeking refugee status, and that the application is being considered "exclusively as a legal issue."

"Doesn't exist, doesn't fly"

Macedonian journalist Vladimir Petreski reacted on Thursday to Politika's article, describing it as "ridiculous."

"Politika writes that Gruevski escaped from (via) Tirana, on a Malev flight to Budapest, (a company) that no longer flies nor exists. It's a sad attempt to deflect from the fact that...