“Ukraine will lose”: How Marcel de Graaf and other MEPs Spread the Russian Propaganda
The review of the 50 videos on YouTube channel of Voice of Europe showed that some politicians had been involved in disseminating the Russian propaganda. Politicians from Eastern and Central European governments, as well as members of the EU Parliament, gave various interviews to a channel, which had only 351 subscribers on YouTube.
Notwithstanding the size of the YouTube channel, the reach of Voice of Europe on Facebook and X was larger, while its account on X is still functioning. The channel blamed media of globalists for making a wide variety of absurd accusations and speculations about its Russian connections, which it regarded as baseless.
Voice of Europe organized one-to-one interviews and four debates with Maximilian Krah, Joachim Kuhs, Patricia Chagnon, Thierry Mariani, Hervé Juvin, Marcel de Graaff, Matteo Gazzini, Francesca Donato, Miroslav Radačovský, Milan Uhrík, Jorge Buxadé, Anders Vistisen, and Tom Vandendriessche.
These politicians expressed their views regarding the necessity of preventing Ukraine from joining the EU, blamed Ukraine for the start of the full-scale invasion, talked about the level of corruption in the country, as well as difficulties Ukraine was experiencing on the battlefield, argued against supplying Ukraine with more weapons, and called for Ukraine to make some significant concessions. However, YouTube has already removed many videos filmed in the EU Parliament from its website because they violated the policy on deceptive content.
Dutch far-right lawmaker Marcel de Graaff said the following last October, “If it is a war of civilization, well, I hope the civilization in Ukraine will lose”. Maximilian Krah, another far-right politician from Germany, continued by addressing the other four participants of the show in the following manner, “Ukraine has to become a demilitarized buffer zone”.
A frequent narrative disseminated by the aforementioned MEPs implied that it was necessary to hold peace negotiations urgently for the purpose pf stopping the bloodshed of both Russians and Ukrainians. For example, Marcel De Graaf stressed that the best way to get peace was to have Ukraine surrender. Thierry Mariani, a representative of the National Rally party of France, blamed the European Union for giving an impetus to the events, which had forced Russia to invade Ukraine, by signing a trade agreement with Ukraine a decade ago. Furthermore, Maximilian Krah argued that Ukraine should have given up its eastern territories.
According to the secret services of the Czech Republic, the Russian Federation financed and controlled the content of Voice of Europe. Moreover, money obtained from the Kremlin was used for paying particular political representatives for the purpose of disseminating Russian propaganda narratives, and the objective was to try to have an impact on the elections for the European Parliament.
Therefore, the EU authorities should do their best to find and prevent all the Russian propaganda channels from spreading disinformation all over the EU because such measures will ensure integrity and stability in Europe.
