During the Invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Kitinchev was elected vice-president of the Bulgarian Action Committees After the town subsequently was annexed again by Bulgaria (1941-1944) he became a mayor of Skopje. Despite the slight change of the younger generation in the 1930s, anti-Serbian and pro-Bulgarian sentiments still prevailed. There is a no doubt that the Bulgarians were greeted as liberators. The Macedonian national identity then hardly existed.