In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Cypriot politician and social media personality, Fidias Panayiotou (@Fidias0). He’s best known for his clickbait YouTube stunts and for voting against aid to Ukraine and the return of abducted Ukrainian children from Russia.
1/20
Fidias hails from Meniko, Cyprus. In 2019, he began posting videos on YouTube. After a slow start, he found his niche with clickbaity, MrBeast-style content featuring silly stunts, catchy titles and scripted dialogue. Today, Fidias has 2,7 million subscribers on YouTube.
2/20
Fidias’s channel started with trend-riding, but he found his niche in traveling without money — aka freeloading. In one video, he fare-dodged on the Bengaluru Metro. The train authority responded by saying they would file a criminal case against him.
3/20
A month later, Fidias released a video of himself traveling across Japan by free—dodging fares, begging for cash, and sneaking hotel breakfasts. He faced heavy criticism and later posted — and then deleted — an apology.
4/20
After breaking up with his girlfriend in 2021 — and making a 2-video publicity stunt about it — Fidias started working seriously on climbing the social media influencer ladder and becoming more famous. At this time, he also started heavily monetizing his channel.
5/20
At this point, his strategy seemed to be clear: do collabs with bigger YouTubers and rising stars like Airrack, and do even more ridiculous, scripted stunts to grow the subscriber base. And to be fair, he wasn’t all that bad at producing clickbait.
6/20
Fidias’s big break came soon with “I Shook The Top 100 YouTubers’ Hands,” in which he shook the hand of world’s biggest YouTuber, MrBeast. After this, both the production values and views of his videos skyrocketed, and he became a well known figure in the YouTuber scene.
7/20
His most popular video with 15 million views is the one where he hugs the “world’s top 100 celebrities”. His final mission was to hug Elon Musk. He even called for his fans to spam Elon’s mother, Maye Musk, with the hug request. She called the campaign “malicious”.
8/20
At the same time, Fidias was cozying up to pro-Kremlin propagandists and likeminded grifters on his podcasts. He had extremely biased discussions with vatniks people like Russell Brand, Jeffrey Sachs, Nigel Farage and Andrew Tate.
9/20
In 2024, Fidias announced his run for the European Parliament on an anti-partisan platform. With no political background, he was seen as a novelty candidate — but quickly gained traction, especially among young voters, probably due to his YouTube fame.
10/20
Fidias campaigned on reforming education — calling to scrap exams and promote self-learning — while also backing AI and Bitcoin. He shocked many by finishing 3rd with 19,4% of the vote, topping the polls and winning a seat in the European Parliament.
11/20
Initially, he claimed to be running a “direct democracy platform” where he ran social media polls for his voting decisions. For example, he voted against Ursula van der Leyen remaining the president of the European Commission based on the results of a Twitter poll.
12/20
But not all votes were left to be decided by his fans. In July 2024, Fidias abstained from a key vote reaffirming the EU’s support for Ukraine — military, political, humanitarian, and diplomatic. His stance raised eyebrows across the Parliament.
13/20
In Feb 2025, Fidias posted a video titled “How the US forced Russia to invade Ukraine,” featuring Jeffrey Sachs. Sachs, who recently spoke at the European Parliament, blamed the war entirely on the West and NATO, while absolving Russia of any responsibility.
14/20
On May 8, 2025, yet again without a poll, Fidias voted against an EU resolution condemning Russia for abducting Ukrainian children. The motion called for their immediate return & accountability under international law. Only 2 other MEPs opposed it.
15/20
The next day, Fidias visited Moscow for Russia’s Victory Day, claiming his trip was about “dialogue and peace.” During the visit, he met with the chairman of the State Duma. He didn’t mention whether Russia’s war crimes and bombing of civilians in Ukraine were discussed.
16/20
Fidias plays the classic “peacenik” role — claiming that if we just stop sending military aid to Ukraine, Russia will magically end its invasion. It’s a delusional take that ignores reality and whitewashes Russia’s long-standing imperial ambitions and aggression.
17/20
And as always, Fidias avoids talking about Russia. He’s made cozy travel vlogs there, but steers clear of politics. Instead, he blames the EU — while pushing his “direct democracy for the people” gimmick, conveniently skipping polls on anything involving Russia & the war.
18/20
Fidias’ anti-EU stance is also echoed by his old friend and hug buddy, Elon Musk. They’ve shared views on tech moderation and online “freedom,” and at one point, Elon even called for making Fidias the “EU President.” You can’t make this shit up.
19/20
To conclude, Fidias is a social climber with a broken moral compass. He’s inserted himself into serious geopolitical issues — and for some reason, has chosen to simp for Russia while pushing the absurd narrative that the entire conflict is the West’s fault.
20/20
The 2nd edition of “Vatnik Soup — The Ultimate Guide to Russian Disinformation” is officially out!
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American lawyer and politician, Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee). He’s best-known for opposing the aid to Ukraine, undermining NATO by calling the US to withdraw from the alliance, and for fighting with a bunch of braindead dogs online.
1/21
Like many of the most vile vatniks out there, “Based Mike” is a lawyer by profession. He hails from the holy land of Mormons, Utah, where he faces little political competition, allowing him to make the most outrageous claims online without risking his Senate seat.
2/21
Before becoming a senator, Mike fought to let a nuclear waste company dump Italian radioactive waste in Utah, arguing it was fine if they just diluted it. The state said no, the public revolted, and the courts told poor Mikey to sit down.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American national security policy professional and the current under secretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby (@ElbridgeColby). He’s best-known for fighting with cartoon dogs online and for halting military aid to Ukraine.
1/21
Elbridge "Cheese" Colby earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. Before entering government, he worked at top think tanks and in the intelligence community, focusing on nuclear policy and strategic planning.
2/21
Cheese quickly became a key voice for a “China First” strategy, arguing the US must prioritize military buildup in Asia over commitments in Europe or the Middle East. He sees (or saw, rather) Taiwan as the core test of US credibility.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’m going to talk about… Vatnik Soup! As some of you know, we also have a website where you can find every soup ever published. The site also has other useful resources, making it the most comprehensive resource on Russian disinformation & vatniks.
1/15
Unfortunately, Elon has flagged the website as malware, as he might not be very happy about the soups I wrote about him - so far, they have garnered over 60 million views on X/Twitter.
The “freedom of speech” spokesperson doesn’t seem too keen on free speech, after all.
2/15
The heart & soul of the website is of course the soups page. There you can find all 360+ soups, which can be sorted chronologically, by popularity, etc. You can also search for soups by title or even in the soup text:
In today’s Wumao Soup, I’ll introduce how and where the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) online propaganda and influence operations work. Due to China’s massive population and advances in AI, CCP-aligned online content has become increasingly visible.
1/20
Like Russia’s troll farms, China has its own troll army: the “50 Cent Party” or “Wumao” refers to state-linked online commentators who are reportedly paid ¥0.50 per post to steer discussions away from criticism and amplify CCP narratives on social media.
2/20
Back in 2017, a research paper estimated that the Wumao produced almost 500 million fabricated comments annually to distract readers and shift topics. In that sense, Wumao operates very similarly to the Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” model:
In today’s Vatnik Soup and the “Degenerate Russia” series, I’ll show you the brutal reality of Russian war crimes, in particular the horrific tortures and sexual abuses of children, women and men.
Buckle up, this one is not for the faint-hearted.
1/24
For over a decade now and as part of their “firehose of falsehood” propaganda strategy, Russia has been spreading false narratives targeted at right-wing/conservative audiences, portraying russia as a bastion of Christian, traditional,family values.
In the previous “degenerate Russia” series we discussed Russia’s insanely high divorce rates, rampant domestic violence, high murder rates, thriving neo-Nazi culture, corruption of the Orthodox Church, and their massive demographic problem: