Gruevski's maternal grandfather - Mihail D. Miyalkov was a member of the Bulgarian Action Committees in 1941 and later of a "Bulgarian club" founded in Ŝtip in 1942, when the area was annexed by Bulgaria during the Second World War. His mother Nadezhda is also from Ŝtip. She is a sister of the first Minister of the Interior of the Republic of Macedonia - Jordan Mijalkov. During the administration of Nikola Gruevski, his first cousin, Sašo Mijalkov was the director of the Administration for Security and Counterintelligence of the Republic of Macedonia.