In his defense following the scandalous phone conversations he had with Russian pranksters, Zoran Zaev said that other world leaders were also pranked by the same comedians. Vovan and Lexus also managed to get on the phone with the likes of Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Jens Stoltenberg, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Elton John, but none of them was pranked three times, like Zaev was.

The list shows I’m in good company, Zaev said during his press conference today.

As in the leaked conversations, Zaev used the press conference to blame Russia for meddling in the Balkans and announced a campaign to further crack down on the freedom of expression using Russia as an excuse.

It’s clear that manipulations come from propaganda media outlets which a pronounced anti-NATO orientation, and in our country they are spread by media outlets who share lies and misinformation each day, Zaev said.

Zaev insisted that the recordings were done in order to harm “North Macedonia’s path toward NATO. “These are structures often used against persons and countries that have Euro-Atlantic aspirations. This is one of their attempts to directly harm our interests and our attempts to complete the process of our NATO membership”.

Zaev mentioned Russia dozens of times in the hour long compliation of the three conversations he had with “Petro Porosenko” and “Jens Stoltenberg”. He also warned against border changes in the Balkans, a move he attributed to Russia as well, and added that it could be used for Russian, but also Turkish territorial gains in Cyprus.