By Andreas Cosma
The Cypriot member of European Parliament (MEP) Fidias Panayiotou recently claimed that the European Union (EU) High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas had made comments about World War II that were “insulting to history.”
Kallas was responding to questions regarding the close China-Russia relations and the related developments during an interview at an event. In a video he posted, MEP Panayiotou criticized Kallas’ comments as insulting to history and to the sacrifice of Chinese and Russian soldiers who died in World War II.
Panayiotou further cited Kallas’ comments as evidence that she is doing her job “horribly”
The Cyprus Investigative Reporting Network (CIReN) examined the comments of Kallas and the claims by MEP Panayiotou, as well as how he framed these comments, conducted a fact-check, and issued its verdict.
The Claim
On 18 September, 2025, MEP Fidias Panayiotou published a video on his social media accounts criticizing the top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas for comments she made during an interview, regarding the contribution of Russia and China to World War II.
Top EU Diplomat's Embarrassing Statement @kajakallas pic.twitter.com/MR46BDEHCE
— Fidias Panayiotou (@Fidias0) September 18, 2025
In the video, Panayiotou claimed that Kallas “doesn’t know about history,” had caused “diplomatic tensions,” and her comments were not only “an insult to history” but an insult to “all the Chinese and Soviet soldiers that were killed fighting Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.”
Addressing Kallas, MEP Panayiotou further stated “I can understand if you personally hate China and Russia” adding that Kallas is “doing her job horribly” as her job involves “building bridges from countries in the EU with countries outside of the EU.”
The Facts
The EU Foreign Policy Chief’s comments came during the 2025 Annual Conference of the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), an EU foreign policy and security think tank.
After delivering the keynote speech at the event in a session titled ‘Europe In Danger, But Not Alone: Getting Serious About Our Security Responsibilities,’ Kallas responded to a series of questions posed by EUISS Director Steven Everts.
Kallas’s comments that led to Panayiotou’s critical video came as part of a response to a question regarding the “growing alignment between Russia and China, and Chinese support enabling Russia to continue this [the Ukraine] war.”
With the question, Kallas was asked to analyse how the EU can “shape China’s choices” in geopolitics and confront the “China challenge” in the face of the country’s growing geopolitical influence and alliance with Russia.
In her response, Kallas named the current moment in time as a “battle of narratives” for the Global South. Kallas made reference to statements by the Russian and Chinese leaders at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin in August and at the commemoration in Beijing of imperial Japan’s defeat in World War II, in which the leaders had touted their countries role in defeating Nazism and imperial Japan.
In reference to the statements, Kallas claimed “Russia was addressing China like we ‘fought the second world war, we won the second world war and we defeated Nazism,’ and I was like, ‘ok, that is something new.’ If you know history, it raises a lot of question marks in your head. I can tell you that people don’t read and remember history that much. You can see that they buy these narratives.”
Selective Framing
Panayiotou’s video isolated Kallas’s comments to neglect the fact that they were made in response to a question about shifting alignments, as well as concerns about shifting narratives and revisionist views relating to World War II, in addition to the wider geopolitical context. This took her comments out of context and served to badly frame her views.
Panayiotou’s selective use of a small segment of Kallas’ response excluded key context and enabled him to frame her comments as ‘ignorant’ of history or dismissive of Chinese and Soviet sacrifices during World War II.
In her response, Kallas went on to say that she considers that “the problem with the big superpowers or sometimes the mistake they make is that they sometimes overestimate their own power and underestimate how much they need others.” She said this is a worrying trend and visible in relation to the developments referenced in China.
This view would certainly align with the view of Panayiotou that Kallas’ role is to build bridges to other countries and foster positive diplomatic relations, while also considering the current geopolitical climate in which the world’s superpowers are perceived to be more aggressive in their pursuits, as indicated in the question Kallas was responding to as well as the context of the event.
Kallas claimed that this should be concerning to all parties, and had highlighted in her keynote speech that there “are growing alliances of countries that see the world in a fundamentally different way to Europe”, claiming that “when President Xi [Jinping] talked about building a new type of international relations at the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization this week, leaders from over 20 countries were there. Only a handful of those that attended can be considered democratic. Most score poorly on human rights indexes and none are considered to be entirely free under [the] Freedom House index. And this is what we are up against. Whether we like it or not, Europe is engaged in a battle of freedom and democracy.”
While Kallas’ comments may appear to be divisive rather than constructive as Panayioutou’s criticism suggests, given the broader context of her claims, it is clear that she is responding to the significantly more divisive and assertive actions of the Russian and Chinese leaderships both in using historical revisionism to overstate their own country’s contributions and in pursuing assertive alliances with other authoritarian states to change the field of international relations.
An Insult to History?
While Panayiotou accuses Kallas in his video of historical ignorance and disrespect towards the sacrifice of Soviet and Chinese soldiers during World War II, his framing is also historically selective, as it ignores the Soviet Union’s dual role in the war.
In August 1939, the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany named the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which included a secret protocol establishing Soviet and German spheres of influence across Eastern Europe.
Under the protocol, Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to partition Poland, while Latvia, Finland, Bessarabia (a region that falls into modern day Moldova and Ukraine), and Estonia (Kaja Kallas’ country) were allotted to the Soviet sphere of influence.
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded and annexed several of these countries during the next year. The Molotov-Ribbentropp pact was only terminated in June 1941, when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front of the war that resulted in the majority of the casualties brought up by Panayiotou in his video.
In the Pacific theater of World War II, the Soviet Union only agreed to enter the war against Japan at the Tehran Conference in November 1943, committing to do so only once Germany had been defeated. The Soviet declaration of war against Japan did not come until August 8, 1945, after the United States had already dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima two days earlier. Japan surrendered only a week after this.
In criticizing Kallas’ statements as ‘ignorant of history, Panayiotou also ignores Kallas’ own personal history. Kallas’ paternal great-grandfather Eduard Alver was commander of the Estonian Defence League during the Estonian War of Independence of 1918 - 1920 against the Soviet Russians.
During the March 1949 Soviet mass deportation campaigns, Kallas’ mother, an infant at the time, her grandmother and her great grandmother were deported to Siberia and labelled as “enemies of the state”. Kallas’ mother was only allowed to return to Soviet-occupied Estonia in 1959.
Kallas’ personal history as well as that of her home country, is important context in terms of her comments as, for several of the countries bordering Russia, including Estonia, Russian aggression, particularly since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine is a particularly important ongoing concern for citizens and a historical reality that is much more prevalent than in other parts of Europe.
These concerns were particularly evident in the shift in Sweden and Finland’s longstanding position of military neutrality following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that led to both countries joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) only a year later. In the same month that this happened, Russian leader Vladimir Putin suggested Russia would deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus at the request of Minsk.
A Pattern of Promoting Pro-Russian Narratives
Panayiotou’s criticism of Kallas is part of a broader pattern of criticism she has faced both during her time as Estonian Prime Minister, and as the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief.
The video criticizing Kallas also displays a continued pattern from Panayiotou of creating content through his social media channels that questions any confrontational policies by the EU in relation to Russia and China, framing these countries as victims of the West or touting the need for a diplomatic approach and talks.
American economist and policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs, who has been a guest on Panayiotou’s podcast previously described Kallas as ‘one of the most aggressively russophobic politicians in the world.’
Sachs views on the Russian war in Ukraine have proved controversial previously and he has been criticized for promoting pro-Kremlin narratives including describing the invasion of Ukraine using the wording preferred by the Kremlin to call it a ‘special military operation.”
In addition to Sachs, Panayiotou has hosted journalist and Moscow correspondent Thanasis Avgerinos on his podcast who also presented claims supporting Russian narratives about the conflict including that the invasion would never have happened if “the West had not turned Ukraine into an anti-Russian tool” and that Ukrainian President Zelensky “takes substances” and “says stupid things and lies.”
Panayiotou has courted controversy before with the content of his social media posts in relation to Russia, posting videos with titles such as “Why the EU NEEDS China and Russia”, “The Ukraine - Russia War Should’ve Never Happened” which have echoed narratives promoted by Russia as well as ignoring issues of human rights or Russian aggression.
A video published by Panayiotou questioning claims that Russia had kidnapped Ukrainian children led to a heated interview of Panayiotou by Irish Ukraine based journalist Caolan Robertson in which Robertson accused Panayiotou of "shilling for Russia” and being a Russian asset.
THE VERDICT : MISLEADING
The video posted by Fidias Panayiotou criticising EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas as “ignorant of history” and insulting to the sacrifices of Russian and Chinese soldiers in World War II ignores on several key items of context both in Kallas’s comments and where they were made, her own background, and the history of World War II to frame her comments in a misleading way.
Panayiotou’s view on Kallas’ statements ignores that she is making these comments during an event focused on EU security and external threats and in direct response to questions regarding growing relations between China and Russia and attempts to challenge historical narratives.
His criticism of her comments as causing tensions also ignores other parts of her answers where she views the great powers of the world as having to be more aware of the need to work with each other rather than escalating tensions.
In claiming Kallas’ comments are ‘ignorant of history’, Panayiotou also elects to present a selective view of the history of World War II, himself, ignoring key context in the conclusions he makes.
The framing chosen by Panayiotou in isolating these comments by Kallas serves to amplify views expressed by sources close to Russia and critical of the West, a pattern that has been highlighted before in other social media posts and public statements made by Panayiotou.
CIReN’s project “Countering Falsehoods and Propaganda in Island States”
is supported by the European Media and Information Fund (EMIF). The sole responsibility for any content lies with the authors and it may not necessarily reflect the positions of the EMIF and the Fund Partners, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the European University Institute.