Counterspin: Jakimovski Spins – The War between Russia and Ukraine is Because of the Ukrainian “Comedian” President

The reasons for the war between Russia and Ukraine, which began with an invasion and a large military offensive by the Russian army over the entire country, are multifaceted and complex, and the statements of Stevče Jakimovski, leader of the parliamentary party that the war is because Ukraine’s president is a “comedian” are a classic twist of truth and spins. Zelenski is not a “comedian”. On the contrary, he is a bachelor of economics, and Ukraine was not passive and tried to prevent war

Author: Teofil Blaževski

The Mayor of the Municipality of Karpoš and leader of the parliamentary political party GROM, Stevče Jakimovski, speaking on the nationally available television “TV 24”, expressed views on the Russian invasion of Ukraine in which there are several spins:

Spin: …Attempting to reach Russian borders and encircle Russia is a dangerous move… This is too serious, and this could have a chain reaction… It is no coincidence that the aircraft carrier arrived in the Balkans, and that there is a new army of Bondsteel … In Ukraine eight years, as in Croatia before the war Russians were fired, 15,000 and Ukrainians and Russians were killed before the invasion. When you elect a comedian president, you will have grenades for breakfast one morning. Instead of sitting down to negotiate, to find a solution, to find a way to calm the situation, they are rattling with weapons… If NATO intervenes, I guarantee that there will be an unprecedented world war, that there will be the use of nuclear weapons….

[Source: TV 24 – Studio 10 / conversation with S. Jakimovski – date: 24 February 2022]

Counterspin: Stevče Jakimovski expressed a classic spin in his mini-analysis of the war in Ukraine, which began with the Russian invasion of this country on February 24, 2022, with a coordinated and precisely planned large-scale military intervention. Asked about the situation in Ukraine and the war, Jakimovski said that he had long warned that “Russia is not a country to play with”, but that the invasion was a consequence of Ukraine’s behaviour and that this was mainly the case, among other things, because of the “elected comedian president”, which is the basis of this slightly broader distortion of the truth, i.e. a spin.

First a few words on the “comedian”. Jakimovski distorts the truth, calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a comedian. The Ukrainian president was elected in the legal elections in Ukraine held in 2019, in which, in the second round, he defeated the then president and opponent Petro Poroshenko, who held the presidency from 2014 to 2019. Zelensky defeated Poroshenko in the second round of elections with 73.2 percent of the votes of millions of Ukrainians who went to the polls in 2019.

But most importantly, Zelensky can be called anything but a “comedian”. He was really involved in acting, but at the same time he was a writer, screenwriter and producer of Kvartal 95 Studio, which was established in 2003, with roots from 1997-1998 and in which Zelensky himself has a stake. Moreover, this is a serious private company listed on the Ukrainian stock exchange. So, Zelensky cannot be called a “comedian”, because he is much more than a showman, who only dealt with stand-up comedies.

The Ukrainian President has previously completed a higher education / Faculty of Economics at Kyiv State University and this can be seen from several sources, including his official website.

Hence, Jakimovski’s statement that “when you elect a comedian president, you will have grenades for breakfast one morning” and that “instead of finding a way to calm the situation, they are rattling with weapons” is a classic spin, i.e. twisting the truth.

It is also a spin that Ukraine (and NATO) is the main cause of the Russian invasion and military intervention in Ukraine. First, the problem is multifaceted, and in its current form begins with the Maidan events and the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, continues with the Minsk 1 and 2 agreements on calming tensions and internal conflicts in Ukraine in two areas that have been recognized as authonomous, and continued with the building up of strong Russian military units on the border with Ukraine, including those with Belarus under the pretext of military exercises, yesterday’s diplomatic recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk by the Russian Federation, the entry of Russian “peacekeepers” the same night into those territories and finally, the overall large-scale military attack on the whole of Ukraine, on the morning of 24 February 2022.

A week ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed readiness to travel to Moscow and talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin and also said that he wanted to make telephone contact with Putin on the evening and night of February 23-24, but from the other side there was “silence” from the other side. After the latest crisis escalated, and after the international media began to widely report on the accumulation of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, both Zelensky and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said that they had repeatedly tried to meet or at least have telephone conversations with their Russian counterparts, but their efforts were unsuccessful.

Hence, the statement of Jakimovski, President of the Parliamentary Party GROM and Mayor of the Municipality of Karpoš, which refers to the war in Ukraine on the part of Zelenski and the main reason for the war, are cynical and argumentative impermissible simplification and distortion of the things in question. We assess these statements as spins.

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