So Nicolai Lilin would have run away. This can be deduced from a video recorded on August 9. It is a conditional necessity because it is currently impossible to verify. It could even be a great publicity stunt. “They opened a criminal case against me, they declared me a secret agent of Putin’s Kremlin,” the Moldovan writer and tattoo artist said in the video, noting that he had searched for his Italian passport and had it canceled.

Lilin always bows before Putin

Beyond the currently assumed “secret agent” accusation, their interventions over the last decade have certainly amounted to de facto support for Putin and his imperialism. We do not forget that Lilin attended a ceremony 10 years ago in the small Ceriano Laghetto, together with the mayor of the Northern League, Dante Cattaneo, to name a square “Odessa Martyrs”, where it was clearly stated whether this name was chosen intentionally or not. The massacre of Jews during World War II or the deaths in the Trade Union Palace in 2014 (or both), but certainly Lilin and Cattaneo also carried the flags of the so-called Donetsk republic, a rogue and puppet state created by Russian citizens in the Donbas, thanks to Russian weapons and the Russian army. The beginning of the invasion that no one, or almost no one, wants to see.

Later, starting from February 24, 2022, Lilin was invited to television several times: using a moderate and almost critical language towards Putin and the war, he cleverly repeated that in order to understand the war, it is necessary to “understand the Russians”, the reasons for the origin of military aggression (of course, we can say this: we need to understand the imperialism underlying the Dugin-Putin doctrine, the fascism of the Russian state, etc., and deal with this real danger for Europe).

Santoro’s list and the “Ucronazis”

But Lilin also described the villages conquered by the Russians as “liberated” on her social media channels and spoke out against the “Ukronazis”. A few months ago, she ran for the European elections on Santoro’s “pacifist” list (collecting a “good” 2,300 votes) and showed that “pacifist” speeches imply not peace but the surrender of Ukraine. And to think that Green Europe was about to nominate her for the Milan municipal elections in 2021, was complemented by a festive welcome from the then national spokesperson of the EV, Eleonora Evi (now a member of the Democratic Party). This event did not only happen because the radical left mayoral candidate Gabriele Mariani, an opponent of the EV and Beppe Sala coalition, condemned everything with a bold and meaningful statement, starting with the headline “Green Eurasia?”, Mariani wondered, recalling that Lilin did this because she participated in public meetings with Italian, Dughinian and Putinist far-right extremists whose ideas she held.

We do not know where Lilin really is at the moment and whether the Milan prosecutor’s office is really investigating him. But we do know that Russian disinformation is a structured and scientific operation against all of us and the stability of our democracies: defending ourselves is a duty. The way to do this is to expose the propaganda lies. Lilin has been spreading disinformation about Ukraine and the war since 2014. He is definitely not one of those people who can be trusted to understand Russia, Ukraine, or the war. But in the end, it does not really matter whether he is really under investigation. What is important is not this or that person, but the disinformation mechanism: to understand it in order to undermine it, that is what is really important.