Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 01/04/2022
In a recent interview with CNN, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia would not have attacked Ukraine if this country had been a member of NATO. Some websites in our speaking area have equipped their articles about this interview with headlines claiming that Zelensky blamed NATO for the war.
On March 20, 2022, the website Srbija danas published an article entitled:
ZELENSKY BLAMES NATO FOR THE WAR! President of Ukraine angrily: “You can’t put us in this situation”
The article quotes the statement of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, concerning the relations between NATO and Ukraine, which he gave to CNN.
The Ukrainian president said that Russia would not have invaded that country if it had been admitted to the North Atlantic Alliance earlier.
– If we were a member of NATO, the war would not have started. “I would like to receive security guarantees for my country, for my people”, Zelensky told CNN.
– If NATO members are ready to see us in the Alliance, do it now because people die every day. But if you are not ready to save the lives of our people, if you just want to see us in two worlds, if you want to see us in this position where we do not understand whether you can accept us or not – you can not put us in this situation, you cannot force us to be in this limbo – said Zelensky.
He says that he asked NATO to directly say when Ukraine will be admitted to the Alliance.
In a year or two or five, just say it directly and clearly, or just say no. And the answer was very clear, you will not be a member of NATO, but publicly, the door will remain open – said Zelensky.
This article with an identical title was later published by the website Alo (.rs).
We also found the claim that Zelensky blamed NATO for the war in Ukraine on the YouTube channel Balkanske vesti in the title of the video, which features the aforementioned article.
According to the CrowdTangle tool, the article on the website Srbija danas gathered over five thousand interactions on Facebook and more than two thousand comments.
In its article, Srbija danas refers to an interview given by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to CNN. On March 20, 2022, CNN published the text on its website. CNN’s text does not state that the Ukrainian president blamed NATO for Russia’s attack on his country. During the conversation (video available on this link), Zelensky said that he believes that the war in Ukraine would not have started if that country had been a member of NATO. This, however, does not mean that he blamed this alliance for the war, as Srbija danas and Alo (.rs) claimed in their headlines, consciously substituting theses. During the interview, Zelensky even emphasized that he was grateful for NATO’s help to his country since the beginning of the invasion, which was omitted in the analyzed articles.
The messages of the President of Ukraine were also shared by other media in our speaking area, but they equipped their texts with different headlines (link, link).
Therefore, we assess the claim that Volodymyr Zelensky blamed NATO for the war in Ukraine, published in the headline on the website Srbija danas, as fake news. Other appearances are rated as the distribution of fake news. The titles of the analyzed articles also receive a clickbait rating since this claim is not mentioned in the articles.
