After the defeat of the Communist uprising of September 1923 in Bulgaria, the new government repressed leftist Macedonian organizations aided by the IMRO. Subsequently part of the fleeing from Bulgaria "federalists" placed themselves in Yugoslav service, joining the Association against Bulgarian Bandits. Panitsa who had moved meanwhile from Greece to Belgrade, served as advisor of this "Association". Later he went in Vienna, where the rest of the federalist leadership was reassembled. Here they got into contact with the Comintern and Bulgarian Communist Party and Panitsa became a Soviet spy and an associate of the Military Department of the BCP.