SKOPJE, Macedonia — Only a few hundred people had gathered inside the cavernous Phillip II stadium, but the black-clad fans clustered together and unfolded a message just in case anyone was watching: a long banner with the words “The Name Is Our Identity.”

The supporters were the Komiti, the hardcore fans, known as ultras, of one of Macedonia's most decorated football clubs, FK Vardar. The message they unveiled last weekend wasn't directed at rival fans, but rather toward the Macedonian government and a referendum taking place this Sunday that is seen as pivotal for the volatile Balkans. And the ultras have become a central part of the story.

The vote in Macedonia is over whether the country should change its name, to the Republic of North Macedonia, to end a decades-long dispute with Greece that has blocked its path to membership of NATO and the European Union. Western leaders have intervened massively in the campaign, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a long line of other VIPs all visiting the small state to urge voters to back the name change.

Western officials hope the referendum will bring Macedonia firmly into their orbit and set back Russian efforts to wield influence in the region. The European Union also aims to use momentum from the name-change deal, agreed between the Macedonian and Greek governments in June, to resolve other dangerous disputes in the region, such as the frozen conflict between Kosovo and Serbia.

On the frontlines of the battle against the deal are nationalist football fans from both Greece and Macedonia, who double as a vanguard for political movements. Adding intrigue to their campaign are accusations that some of FK Vardar's ultras have been financed by Ivan Savvidis, the Russian owner of top Greek club PAOK Thessaloniki, who gained international fame when he stormed onto the pitch with a gun strapped to his hip near the end of a high-stakes game. Savvidis has strongly denied the claims but Macedonia’s government has said Greek businessmen sympathetic to Russian interests are fomenting trouble.

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At the heart of the dispute between Greece and Macedonia are two of the most combustible things in politics: territory and identity. Macedonia was previously a republic inside communist Yugoslavia. Its leaders vowed to continue to use the name when they declared independence in 1991. But many Greeks believe the name implies a territorial claim on a part of northern Greece, also called Macedonia, and accuse their neighbors of trying to appropriate the cultural identity and history of ancient Greece.

After the name-change deal was agreed in June, thousands protested against it in both the Macedonian capital Skopje and the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki. For Greek opponents of the deal, northern Macedonia is where they live, not the country to the northwest. Many PAOK supporters were among the protesters in Thessaloniki.

“All the people from northern Macedonia were involved and since PAOK is the greatest club in northern Macedonia the fans of PAOK were involved,” recalled Aris, a PAOK fan walking to one of the club’s recent big matches, the second leg of a Champions League playoff against Benfica of Portugal at the end of August. Thousands dressed in the club colors of black and white were streaming toward the club's Toumba Stadium under a heavy police presence.

Aris, who declined to give his surname, said the protest was about something deeper than politics. “It is coming from inside us. We feel that it is unfair so we had to protest. Not as PAOK fans, but as Macedonians. As Greek Macedonians,” he said. Like almost everyone else I spoke to in Thessaloniki, he didn't have a bad word to say about Savvidis, who was banned from football matches in Greece for three years for his pistol-packing match disruption.

Savvidis, Aris added, had invested in the city and lowered unemployment, which he said is more than the government in Athens had done. There is, he explained, a long history of antipathy in Thessaloniki toward the capital.

“Of course he's loved, he deserves to be,” added Aris, as a line of powerful, blacked-out cars cut through the police line. Savvidis, explained Aris, still comes to the stadium before every game to wave off the team, before leaving to meet the terms of his ban. “That must be very difficult,” said Aris. “I admire him for that.”

Once Savvidis had left the Toumba ahead of the Benfica game, the stadium filled to bursting. Before kickoff, a huge banner was unfurled along one stand, in English. It read: “Macedonia is One and Only And It's Here.”

Ivan Ignatyevich Savvidis was born in 1959 into a poor Pontic Greek family in rural Georgia, when it was part of the Soviet Union. The Pontic Greeks come from the southern shores of the Black Sea, today in northern Turkey. After the Soviet Union disintegrated, he spent time in Greece before coming back to become the general director of a privatized tobacco factory in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. The company, Donskoy Tabak, became one of the biggest players in the Russian tobacco market.

Donskoy gifted 1 billion cigarettes a year to the Russian army, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported. Over time, Savvidis diversified, building up an empire of businesses. In 2003, he entered Russia's Duma as a member of United Russia, the country's ruling party and long time political home of Vladimir Putin. He served in parliament until 2012.

By then he had turned his attention to Greece, where he went on a spending spree to buy a range of assets at knockdown prices as the country was hit hard by the financial crisis. He is part of a consortium that has bought Thessaloniki’s strategically important port. Newspapers, a TV channel, tobacco companies, vast tracts of real estate and beach fronts, not to mention hotels and other business have all been purchased by Savvidis. But it was the 2012 acquisition of PAOK that transformed him into a local hero.

“He was not a guy that looked like had bought a football team. It was a guy who was going to create, in my opinion, a political party,” said Antonis Repanas, a former reporter in Thessaloniki for Greek newspaper Ta Nea, who who covered Savvidis' arrival at PAOK. Those ambitions are stymied somewhat by Savvidis not speaking fluent Greek, but that hasn't stopped him building strong political links with the ruling Syriza party. “He is creating power in northern Greece, amongst the Pontus [Pontic people] and the fans of PAOK,” added Repanas.

Quite why Savvidis is building up power in northern Greece has been the subject of intense speculation. His role at the Thessaloniki port, which is used by NATO, has led some to see a fit with the Kremlin’s political agenda.

Such speculation was fueled by a report from Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a respected investigative journalism group, which claimed Savvidis had funneled €300,000 in cash to nationalist groups in Macedonia — particularly FK Vardar's Komiti ultras group. Citing interior ministry documents, the report said the aim of the transfers is to spark protests against the name deal.

FK Vardar is owned by another Russian tycoon, Sergey Samsonenko, who also comes from Rostov. A spokesperson for FK Vardar said they haven't heard of the investigative journalists' report but denied that anyone at the club is involved in anything political. “Mr. Samsonenko … only worked on the development of the sport,” the spokesperson said.

Savvidis' Greek holding company released a statement denouncing the investigation, calling the report “totally false and highly slanderous.” Savvidis himself declined to be interviewed for this article.

But the Macedonian government made clear it saw a pattern of interference. Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said there wiis evidence that Greek businessmen, “sympathetic to the Russian cause” of preventing NATO expansion, had paid money to Macedonians to “commit acts of violence.”

The Greek government also appears to suspect Russian meddling to try to torpedo the name deal. Athens expelled two Russian diplomats over alleged interference in Greece's internal affairs, thought to be related to the deal, causing a diplomatic crisis with Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later canceled a planned trip to Athens.

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Last weekend in Skopje, a few hours’ drive northwest of Thessaloniki, Kirill had bigger issues to worry about than an imminent football match or the referendum. Kirill (as is common with ultras, he declined to give his last name) is one of the leaders of the Komiti. Shaven-headed and powerfully built, Kirill was both intense and friendly as he walked around an empty office space in the center of the city. “There is too much to do, too much,” he said as he gave me a tour of what will be his new casino, pointing to where various game tables will sit.

There was so much to do that he would miss that weekend's clash between FK Vardar and local rivals Rabotnički at the Phillip II stadium — named after the father of Alexander the Great. Macedonia’s former government named major sites such as the stadium after figures from ancient Greek history and oversaw a kitsch makeover of Skopje in a vaguely neoclassical style. Such moves enraged Greeks, who saw them as a provocation. The current government has removed Alexander the Great’s name from Skopje airport and a highway as part of its effort to resolve differences with Athens. (Officially the national stadium is now called the Telekom Arena after the naming rights were sold in 2016 but it is still popularly known by its former name.)

“The ultras … make up a constituency that every political party would like to have” — Artan Grubi, MP for the Democratic Union of Integration

In return for Macedonia changing its name, the Greek government has pledged to lift its block on its neighbor joining NATO and opening EU membership talks.

Kirill is open about opposing the proposed name change. “Today we are in danger because we are in ... defense of the name and the Macedonian national dignity,” he said later in written answers to questions.

“Our position is clear,” he added. “We do not support national treason.” Kirill described stories about Savvidis’ influence over the Komiti as “clear speculation” and pointed out that PAOK fans fly a banner at home games directly challenging Macedonia's independence.

The Komiti, which can number up to 6,000 depending on the match they are attending, took part in protests against the name change alongside other ultra groups, because they believe the deal is “suicide” for Macedonia, Kirill said. One of those protests, in June, turned violent, with nine people injured and dozens arrested as protesters tried to storm the parliament.

Ultras have long been involved in politics in Macedonia and across the Balkans. In Macedonia, groups are divided largely on ethnic lines. The majority of the population are ethnic Macedonians, who are mainly Orthodox Christians, while around a quarter are ethnic Albanians, who are generally Muslim.

“The ultras … make up a constituency that every political party would like to have,” said Artan Grubi, an MP for the Democratic Union of Integration, an ethnic Albanian political party in Macedonia.

Grubi was also an ultra leader. He was a founding member of the Shvercerat, or “The Smugglers,” an ethnic Albanian ultras group associated with Skopje's FC Shkupi club, who share a fierce rivalry with FK Vardar. “They are well-organized. They keep together — function like a group, like an army,” he said of ultras. “They are the engine of a political party, in a protest movement.”

“All of the political parties flirt with the groups,” Grubi said. In return, political parties would help with transport to get to international matches or help to buy “pyro” — flares and other fireworks often seen on the terraces. And if ultras cause trouble with the blessing of a governing party, “they have protection from the police,” he added.

The "smugglers" have deployed in support of ethnic Albanian causes. In 2011, Grubi helped arrange a protest at the building of an Orthodox church inside the city's fort. When we met, Grubi pulled up the YouTube video and played it: Groups of men charging at each other, on one side the Smugglers, on the other the Komiti. “There, that's me,” he said, as a younger version of himself threw a punch and appeared to get hit in the head with a rock. He and 60 others were arrested. Grubi was given a six-month suspended sentence.

After our meeting, Grubi was about to leave and give a speech before FC Shkupi's home game later that day, urging a vote in favor of the name change in Sunday’s referendum. “Today at the match I'll be recalling to them that we are the first ones to organize tens of thousands of people to come out for NATO,” he said.

Other former ultras leaders have found themselves in the parliament too, like former Komiti leader Johan Tarčulovski, the only Macedonian successfully indicted and tried for war crimes at The Hague tribunal. He is now an MP for the nationalist former governing party, VRMO-DPMNE. He is also accused of helping to storm the parliament in April last year, an assault in which future Prime Minister Zaev was injured.

At the near empty Phillip II stadium last weekend, after the Komiti had displayed their banner against the proposed name change, FK Vardar went on to beat local rivals Rabotnički 2-0. There was no trouble. In fact, as the vote has neared, the name-deal protests have died down. The opposition has been divided over whether or not to boycott the vote

Yet Sunday's referendum might only be the beginning. Even if the name change passes that hurdle, the deal will still have to be approved by parliaments of both countries — something that is far from assured.

Thessaloniki and Skopje have almost certainly not seen the last of the protests, the banners and the ultras’ influence on politics.

James Montague is a sports journalist and author. His latest book is The Billionaires Club: The Unstoppable Rise of Football's Super-Rich Owners.