Caolan Robertson’s interview with Fidias

A remarkable video interview was published this week, which I want to discuss. Journalist Caolan Robertson interviews Fidias.

Here it is. My comments below.

Caolan Robertson is a journalist who previously did some work in Ukraine along with other reporters. He saw that as the war keeps dragging on, there is too little from-the-ground reporting from Ukraine in the West. He decided to move to Ukraine and contribute to filling that gap, and has been doing stellar work reporting about Ukraine’s fight for freedom and defense against russian aggression. Check out his work and follow him if you aren’t following already.

Fidias Panayiotou, who goes by simply “Fidias,” is a member of European Parliament from Cyprus, and a major asshole that keeps reciting russian poison and lies straight from the Kremlin script. See this vatnik soup about his “accomplishments.”

This interview is a remarkable collision of their two worlds that deserves to be seen and studied widely, for reasons that I’ll explain below.

In this video, you will see Fidias reciting many russian garbage tropes, and resorting to standard russian propaganda behaviors when countered and challenged. These are all commonplace, but I was struck by how concentrated and pure form they appear in this video.

Claiming to condemn russian aggression, but always following with “yes, but…”. Fidias claims to condemn russian invasion of Ukraine, but always immediately follows with “but,” reciting russian garbage excuses justifying the invasion.

“The truth is complex and hidden.” Claiming that it is not as simple as it seems, and denying the core fact of this war that russia invaded Ukraine simply because it chose and wanted to, and that Ukrainians are defending themselves.

“I just want peace, stop people from dying.” The russian poison spreaders never mention the quickest and most obvious way to peace, which would be for russia (who broke the peace and started the invasion in the first place) to simply stop the killing and go home. Instead, they twist themselves into pretzels and use mad mental gymnastics to explain why russia’s victims should surrender, ignoring the fact that russia always continues mass killing, deportations, and other crimes on all its occupied territories.

Failing to condemn russian crimes, specifically kidnapping of Ukrainian children. One factor motivating this interview was that Fidias was one of three MEPs who voted against a European Parliament resolution calling for the return of 20,000 Ukrainian children abducted by russia, and later amended his vote to abstain. He makes an insane claim in this video that perhaps some of the abducted children actually wanted to stay in russia.

“What about Turkey” and “What about other MEPs.” Whataboutism is a common russia propaganda response to uncomfortable questions to which they have no good answer. Fidias tries to compare russia’s invasion of Ukraine to Turkey’s occupation of Cyprus, claiming that it is necessary to talk about diplomacy and peace in these situations, and tries to divert the focus from his own behavior to that of other MEP-s who also voted against the children abduction resolution.

“Where is the evidence that I am a russian asset?” Caolan correctly claims that Fidias is a russian asset based on the content of all his posts and work, and Fidias tries to challenge this, demanding evidence like receipts of payments to him from russia. There are no such receipts known publicly today (even though I am sure they exist, and will become public one day), but Caolan is correct to focus on the substance of his posts. When you post russian lies and garbage, you help russia and are a russian asset, simple as that.

“We both have our truths, this is democracy.” When everything else fails, Fidias laughs at the whole thing, and claims that in democracy, everyone is entitled to their own truth, and it is beautiful that they can debate truths in this fashion.

Caolan provides a stellar example of how to respond to russian poison and lies, and how to counter those that spread this garbage. He is having none of Fidias’ nonsense, and focused back on russian aggression and crimes whenever Fidias tries to steer away from it.

Too many Western journalists can only operate in a good-faith environment, when there is at least some basic agreement about the tenets and premise of the interview. A bedrock of journalism is to be objective and neutral, and give all parties air time and all opinions equal weight. russian propaganda knows very well how to abuse this to spread its poison, and has used Western journalists as tools. In the best case, these journalists are simply unaware useful idiots, and in the worst case, they have been corrupted by russian poison and are willing accomplices to whitewashing russian aggression and crimes.

Caolan shows how to correctly handle russian poison spreaders. They are not speaking with us in good faith, and do not deserve any respect or benefit of the doubt. They know very well what they are doing, which is attacking the very core of our societies, freedoms, and democracies. The right way is to counter and challenge them, not simply let them spread their poison and lies.