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 social media influencer, Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson). He’s best known for his plagiarism while working as a clickbait “journalist”, and for being paid by the Kremlin to spread anti-Ukraine and anti-Democratic narratives.
1/23
Benny graduated from the University of Iowa in 2009 with a degree in developmental psychology. His former high school buddy described him as the “smartest, most articulate kid in school,” and was disappointed to see him turn into a “cheating, low standard hack.”
2/23
After graduating, Benny dived directly into the world of outrage media. Benny’s first job was writing op-eds for far-right website Breitbart, from where he moved on to TheBlaze, a conservative media owned by Glenn Beck, and a spring board for many conservative influencers.
In today’s May 9th Vatnik Soup, we discuss the ambiguous relationship of the Kremlin with Nazism and explain why so many vatniks can be outright Nazis, and promote or excuse them while at the same time being so hysterical about alleged “Nazis in Ukraine”.
1/23
Of course, Kremlin propaganda employs the Firehose of Falsehood and often lacks any consistent ideology other than spreading chaos and seeking power, so such contradictions can be commonplace. However in this case there is a certain cynical consistency there.
2/23
To understand modern Russia, we need to go back a hundred years to the beginnings of Soviet Russia/Soviet Union — a genocidal terror regime under dictators Lenin and Stalin, whose totalitarian and imperialist legacy Putin’s Russia fully embraces.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll discuss the state of X in May 2025. Since its acquisition by Elon Musk, this platform has rapidly transformed into his personal political tool and a breeding ground for hate speech and disinformation.
1/22
Not everyone is following this shitshow as closely as I am, so I thought it would be good to write a summary of all the changes that have happened on this forum and outside of it. These changes have drastically changed how the platform operates and who gets “a voice” here.
2/22
Elon’s team has been tweaking the algorithm many times after the takeover. One of these tweaks happened already around Nov 2022, when the platform heavily suppressed the visibility of pro-Ukraine accounts. This change was then noticed & reported by many pro-Ukraine accounts.
3/22
In today’s 350th Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American comedian and podcaster, Dave Smith (@ComicDaveSmith). He’s best-known for his numerous appearances on the Joe Rogan Experience and for his unhinged takes on the Russo-Ukrainian War.
1/22
Smith has a massive megaphone - he’s a good friend of Joe Rogan, and he’s appeared on Joe’s podcast a whopping 16 times. Naturally, he’s also visited Lex Fridman’s podcast and frequently appears on Fox News’ Kennedy and The Greg Gutfeld Show.
2/22
Dave is part of the Kremlintarian section of the Libertarian Party called Mises Caucus. They took control of the party in May 2022, and with the help of their new leader, Angela McArdle, turned it into an extension of the MAGA Republicans:
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Russian journalist, Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin). He’s best-known for posing as a Russian dissident, while at the same time sneakily promoting the Kremlin’s narratives about the Russo-Ukrainian War.
1/20
On paper, Leonid doesn’t look like your typical Kremlin apologist - he’s written and worked for prestigious Western outlets like the BBC, the Guardian, and he’s even written some Lonely Planet guides for the Baltic countries!
2/20
But Ragozin’s public commentary often seems to walk a fine line: condemning the war while pushing narratives that shift blame, dilute responsibility, or quietly carry the same old imperial baggage Russia - or its opposition - has never truly forgotten.
In today’s Vatnik Soup REBREW, I’ll introduce a bank that is well-known in both Austria and Russia: Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) and its Russian subsidiary, AO Raiffeisen. It is one of the few foreign banks that still does business in Russia.
1/21
Raiffeisen’s Russian branch was founded in 1996 and expanded dramatically after the acquisition of Russia’s Impexbank in 2006. A year later, it was the largest bank trading in foreign capital (seventh in size) in Russia.
2/21
In the early 2000s, Raiffeisen opened new branches in Russia, including in Saint Petersburg, Samara, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Krasnodar. After 2018, it focused on digital expansion and by 2021 it had a digital presence in more than 300 cities.