The European Parliament has launched an investigation into the five MEPs who traveled to Moscow during Russia’s Victory Day celebrations, according to Cypriot YouTuber MEP Fidias Panayiotou, one of the five. The MEPs met with Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the Duma, in addition to other Russian politicians, during their visit.
“I must tell you that our visit to Moscow with other MEPs did not please the European Parliament at all; it has already launched an investigation against us,” Panayioutou said in a video published on his Greek-language account on X. The Cypriot MEP referred to Russians as “brothers” and pointed to the common religious and moral values they share with Greeks.
The investigation of the lawmakers’ Moscow visit “is yet another confirmation that the current state of affairs in Europe is far from the democracy they claim to uphold,” Russian State Secretary and Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Ivanov said to TASS. “This shows how ‘freedom of speech’ works in the West. They have established a ‘rule of law’ and are now punishing their own MPs, who supposedly live in a free country.”
The Duma quoted visiting Slovakian MEP L’uboš Blaha (SMER) as saying,
We have come to show that there are still people in the European Union and the European Parliament who advocate relations with Russia and their development.
In a video on his English-speaking X account, Panayioutou criticized the EU’s approach to the Russo-Ukraine war, saying it “only makes the death of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers as well as civilians to [sic] keep going, and also, it increases the chance of a nuclear war.” He argued for Europe to push for diplomacy and peace negotiations instead of further weapons shipments to Ukraine—a position promoted by Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán throughout the war, earning him the moniker “pro-Russian” from the EU.
Ruth Firmenich and Michael von der Schulenburg, two German MEPs who also went to Russia last week, said they saw their trip as a step to “overcome the ever-increasing spiral of confrontation and escalation in Europe.” The two members of the left-wing populist Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht next intend to visit Kyiv, and have contacted Ukrainian officials.
