Licking Putin’s boots for cash – The Rise of Fidias Panayiotou
Fidias Panayiotou should have remained a footnote in the digital age—a social media stuntman best remembered for licking toilets and chasing online relevance. Instead, he now sits in the European Parliament, voting against Ukraine and parroting Kremlin talking points. His trajectory from YouTube mediocrity to political power is not a tale of merit, but of manipulation, propelled by russian troll farms, bot networks, TikTok campaigns and dirty russian money. And somewhere in Moscow, strategists are writing the script.
Following a series of interviews with his former friends and associates, Irish journalist Caolan Rob has put together quite the dossier on the young Parliament member, altogether a damning indictment.
Panayiotou’s entry into politics began as a joke. His campaign was a meme—engineered not to win, but to mock the very idea of political office.
As his former advisor Christofer Tornaritis puts it,
“It wasn’t meant to be serious, honestly. It was just a meme.” Tornaritis helped script the campaign videos, manage press, and boost visibility. Then something shifted. “He won, and it was like something snapped.”
Following his election, Panayiotou cut off his old friends and surrounded himself with unfamiliar faces—many of whom, Tornaritis noticed, spoke Russian and seemed to know much more than he did. Asked who they were, Panayiotou brushed it off: “They’re just helping out.” But the shift in tone was unmistakable.
The man who once campaigned with goofy antics began speaking like a spokesman for Russian intelligence. “NATO caused the war.” “The EU is corrupt.” “Ukraine should surrender.” These weren’t ideas. They were verbatim Kremlin propaganda lines—identical to what floods Russian disinformation channels every day.
His digital team noticed the change too. A former freelance video editor recalled how things went from fun to eerie. At first, it was typical influencer work—quick cuts, upbeat energy. Then came the political monologues, all cloaked in false neutrality.
Panayiotou’s shift wasn’t just ideological. It was financial. During a meeting at his house in Cyprus, he spoke freely about new “opportunities” since joining Parliament. He even floated the idea of starting a business in Russia. When asked how he was making money, he dodged specifics, only insisting, “It’s not public money.” That was the last straw for some of his team.
Yet despite his posturing, Panayiotou knows exactly what he’s doing. Italian journalist Antonio Pellegrino was one of the first to notice the pattern.
Every vote he cast in Parliament followed the Kremlin line. Every video dripped with the same manipulative charm that Russian operatives have spent years perfecting for Western audiences.
And he’s effective—because he doesn’t look like a propagandist. He smiles. He jokes. He pretends to be “just asking questions.” But the message is always the same: the West is corrupt, Ukraine is doomed, and Russia is the misunderstood peacekeeper.
Romanian policy analyst Eusebiu Slavitescu puts it clearly:
Panayiotou is part of a much larger machine that Russia has spent over a decade building: a network of influencers, fringe politicians, and media manipulators who soften public opinion before the tanks arrive. He didn’t stumble into it. He followed the path laid out for him, one algorithm-optimized talking point at a time.
” The European Parliament is not a playground,” says Finnish disinformation expert Pekka Kallioniemi. “And this isn’t a game.”
But for the Kremlin, it is a very useful one.
From mediocrity to Moscow’s mouthpiece, Fidias Panayiotou is a case study in how the Kremlin manufactures relevance. He was never meant to be serious. But now he’s helping a hostile foreign power wage war on Europe, while authorities look the other way.
