Athens, 28 July 2022 (MIA) – After 20 days of intensive search at sea, on land and from air during which the OFKATH volunteer rescuers “combed” through the Gulf of Thessaloniki, the area around the Chalkidiki peninsula, but also the entire Aegean Sea, the ground operations in search of missing Macedonian Martin Jovanovski are stopping, but the search will not end, reports MIA’s Athens correspondent on Thursday. OFKATH told MIA that the ground operations will stop, but the search will continue on another level, namely through lawyers, hearings etc. The volunteer rescue team said in a Facebook post Thursday that it has been 20 days since Martin’s disappearance, and the efforts to locate him have been fruitless, despite their thorough search with all means available. “Martin does not ‘belong’ in the sea, Martin belongs on the ground and there, at some point, he has to ‘return’. Let’s leave the sea to do its job for a few days in the hopes it will return him to us. We sympathize with his family and this is the reason why we won’t let this case close. We gave his mother Lidija and his brother Goran a promise that we will find Martin. The search continues on… another level” wrote OFKATH. OFKATH members have been on the ground since the very beginning, in different parts, both on land and in water; their search continued even after the end of the official search by the Greek Coast Guard. Martin disappeared on July 9 near Possidi on the first ‘finger’ of Chalkidiki, after entering the sea with two friends. The goal of the rescue operation initially was to save the three friends, who because of the bad weather, found themselves in a helpless situation and drifted away from the coast. The first one, 25-year-old Vasil was saved on the first day after having spent two hours in the water, while a day later, after around twenty hours at sea, 30-year-old Ivan was also saved. Although the usual practice of the Greek Coast Guard is for a search to last 72 hours after the disappearance, the deadline was extended upon official request from the Macedonian side and a telephone conversation between the Foreign Ministers of both countries, Bujar Osmani and Nikos Dendias. The official search by the Greek Coast Guard ended on July 14, but the operation was continued by volunteer rescue teams.