Another woman robbed in the middle of Skopje, another reminder that the city's safety isn't the one they advertise. A sixty-one-year-old resident of Skopje reported to the Skopje police on 7 July at 22:35 that she had been robbed in the Bit Pazar area. According to the report, an individual used physical force to snatch her bag - full of money and personal documents - and fled.

The story sounds unsettlingly familiar. An elderly woman, late at night, in a part of the city that for years has been mentioned as troublesome when it comes to safety. The snatched bag doesn't just mean lost money, but also personal documents she now has to re-issue, with all the queues and costs that entails. For a pensioner, it's a double blow - both material, and to her sense of security.

The police are searching for the perpetrator, but the question that recurs after every case like this remains: how many robberies like this have to happen before someone seriously deals with safety in these parts of the city? Every single report ends up as a statistic, and statistics rarely turn into more patrols where they are actually needed.

While the authorities talk about smart cameras and modern systems, an ordinary woman still can't calmly walk in the evening with a bag in her hand. That's exactly where real safety is measured - not in the number of installed devices, but in whether a pensioner can get home without fear. And the answer, sadly, is these days more and more often - no.