Slakonja had been working on the video clip for the song for a year and a half. It was premiered at this year’s Ema, Slovenia’s competition for the Eurovision Song Contest. "I saw how popular my Žižek video had become on YouTube. It then occurred to me that I could record more video clips parodying famous people – with lyrics in English," Slakonja told MMC a few hours after the BBC published an article on him.

He spent a year and a half writing lyrics, but he discarded many of them because they soon became outdated. He has also been looking for sponsors, but could not find anyone. "In the end, I figured I could self-fund my first video clip, and that’s exactly what I did," Slakonja said.

In the meantime, he received an offer to host Ema, and so he decided to premiere his impersonation of Putin, the world’s most powerful person according to Forbes, at Ema. "It was a lot like my song 'Slovenia Will Win' performed by my solo project One Man Band Aid back in 2012. I wanted to draw attention to Slovenia and promote the country to the Eurovision audience. This year, I took a similar approach, except that I parodied Putin," Slakonja remarked. "I definitely received more attention this time around," he added with a smile.

Slakonja spent countless hours working on the video. "I don’t know exactly how much time I spent working on this one, because I’ve been working on a number of video clips at the same time, but for the past 6 months my focus has been on Putin, I suppose," he said.

Video causes great stir in international media
Since Saturday, Slakonja has received a ton of emails from websites and TV channels that wanted to share the Putin video. "It's been an interesting few days," he remarked. Slakonja said he knew the video was going to generate some response, just like his video on Žižek did. "But I never expected such a huge response. My focus has been mainly on Ema, so the response really caught me by surprise," the actor admitted.

The video kicked up a storm in Russia, and most of the comments posted under the official YouTube video are in Russian. "I don’t read Russian. Also, there are just too many comments, so I haven’t bothered reading them. Some of the response has been positive, some negative – it’s the same as always," Slakonja said. So far, the video has amassed over 2 million views.

At the end of the video, Slakonja calls upon his fans to support his future projects. "There are some possibilities on the horizon. We’ll see how things unfold. I hope we can raise enough money to continue our #TheMockingbirdMan project," he said, adding: "I’m going to do a Donald Trump and Angela Merkel impression next."

Klavdija Kopina; translated by D. V.