MEP Vandendriessche said he recognized Voice of Europe’s name from the previous parliamentary legislature, before 2019, when he was working as a press officer. He said he was now the victim of a disinformation campaign alleging he was promoted by a Russian disinformation campaign. “How can I be promoted if I gave an interview that has several hundreds of views or that’s it?” he asked.
Joachim Kuhs, the German far-right MEP, did not name Tomlinson but said he did not know that the interview was going to be for Voice of Europe, saying he was under the impression it would be for the European Conservative. Kuhs employs de Graaff’s wife Gabriëlle Popken, in the European Parliament, as an assistant, an arrangement he described as “not unusual.”
“I don’t know who is Voice of Europe,” said Slovak MEP Radačovský, who gave a one-to-one interview calling for peace, when he was door-stepped in Brussels. When asked on what conditions peace should happen, Radačovský suggested he was working for the common good of all humanity and walked away.
MEP Uhrík wrote in an email that it was not his role to find out who was interviewing him: “My duty, as part of political job, is to answer relevant questions to the public, not to ask who is asking.”
Another participant in that debate last October, a consultant called Henri Malosse, raised a three point “peace plan” for Ukraine he said was the brainchild of Medvedchuk — since sanctioned by the Czech Republic for being behind Voice of Europe.
When asked why he raised Medvedchuk’s apparent peace plan for Ukraine during one of the debates, Malosse said: “The journalist told me that he prepared a peace plan so I think it’s something interesting.” “I didn’t give any evaluation of that plan, I just mentioned it,” he said. He also couldn’t remember who the journalists were bar a “young man and a young lady.”