Veteran Italian politician Carlo Calenda went viral over the weekend after a fiery televised clash over Russia and Ukraine with American economist Jeffrey Sachs on a talk show.
Sachs, a Columbia University professor known for his criticism of Western policy toward Russia, accuses the U.S. of orchestrating the 2014 Kyiv revolution and ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych — and provoking the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.
Calenda’s forceful pushback — in which he bluntly accused Sachs of lying about American involvement in the Euromaidan revolution — garnered widespread attention over the weekend and attracted praise from EU heavyweights including Martin Selmayr, once the European Commission’s most powerful official. In the clip, Sachs was visibly taken aback by the intensity of Calenda’s rebuttal.
In an interview with POLITICO on Monday, Calenda — who previously worked as Italy’s minister of economic development, Rome’s ambassador to the EU and as a member of the European Parliament — reflected on the confrontation, the reaction it sparked across Europe and what it reveals about the West’s struggle to confront disinformation and define its geopolitical voice.
Given an opportunity to respond, Sachs did not reply to POLITICO’s requests for comment in time for publication.
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
POLITICO: Were you surprised by the reaction and the kind of attention your remarks have received over the past few days?
Carlo Calenda: Very, very surprised, and also very honored that people such as Anne Applebaum … as well as many professors and journalists would repost it. Fundamentally, people are tired of hearing in the Western media individuals who clearly distort facts, lie and spread pro-Putin propaganda, without journalists often telling them, “What you’re saying is factually untrue.”
There is a deep fatigue among those who defend liberal democracy at seeing people go to Moscow, attend events with figures like [Russian ultraconservative philosopher and ideologue Alexander] Dugin, then return here and are given airtime to carry Putin’s propaganda. That is unacceptable. For once, Professor Sachs faced a counterpoint.
POLITICO: So, in your view, is it a mistake to give space in the public debate to this type of argument?
Calenda: No, I’m a liberal, I believe all viewpoints should be allowed, but they must be put into context. For example, if I were introducing Sachs as a journalist, I would say: “A journalist who has over time taken positions close to Russia, and who a few months ago took part in the Forum of the Future 2050, organized by Alexander Dugin, the ideologue who believes the West is degenerate and that Russia must restore imperial values.” Viewers deserve to know this.
Just as when someone claims that Euromaidan [the large-scale 2013-14 protests in Ukraine demanding closer ties with Europe and an end to government corruption] was funded by the CIA, there are two reasons why that’s false: First, you’d have to explain how millions of people could have been paid; and second, Sachs himself in 2014 said the opposite and condemned Russian imperialism.
There are factual things that cannot be tolerated. And in Italy, unfortunately, TV channels and newspapers go as far as giving airtime even to [Vladimir] Solovyov, who openly calls for nuclear strikes on Europe as if that were normal. It is not.
POLITICO: Do you think that in certain academic or media circles there is more naivete or more political calculation when narratives close to Kremlin propaganda are promoted?
Calenda: It’s a political calculation; it gets audience attention. And above all, there’s a carelessness in never letting informed people speak. I think it’s time we bring clarity, because democracies are built on opinions, but not on the idea that you can say whatever you want without anyone challenging the truth of it. And that, first and foremost, is the job of journalists.
POLITICO: When you agreed to appear on the show last Thursday, were you aware that Sachs would be there, and did you expect to have to debate him on these issues?
Calenda: Yes, I expected it, in fact it was an opportunity to put him to the test. I didn’t even call him a liar outright. I said, “That’s not true,” and he asked, “Are you calling me a liar?” I said, “Yes,” because it simply isn’t true. You can’t claim millions of Euromaidan protesters were paid by the CIA. That’s outrageous. And I was struck that the journalist who had previously covered Euromaidan said, “All opinions are legitimate.” Opinions are legitimate, yes, but truth is not optional.
POLITICO: After that moment on live television, did the debate continue off camera?
Calenda: He was offended, so I let him be offended, I couldn’t care less. I never make it personal.
POLITICO: During the debate with Sachs, you said that one of the great mistakes of your life was having taken part in business agreements after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. In your view, what should Italy and Europe have done at that time instead?
Calenda: We should have understood that Putin’s move wasn’t isolated. Behind it was an imperial logic, a strategy of reclaiming a sphere of influence in line with the Brezhnev Doctrine, neighboring countries must have compliant governments. That was a mistake comparable to Munich with the Sudetenland. Yes, we imposed three rounds of sanctions, which were useless, but we kept doing business as usual. I was the first to make that mistake myself. But it should serve as a lesson: You can’t keep feeding the crocodile hoping it will eat you last; in the end, it eats you anyway.
POLITICO: Is there any room today for a realistic peace negotiation with Moscow?
Calenda: Unfortunately, no. Moscow knows that since the U.S. stopped supplying weapons directly and with Trump’s wavering, Russia’s situation today is stronger. There’s no real possibility of peace, at most a ceasefire, which Russia seems unwilling to accept. The outcome of this discussion is probably that I won’t be invited back to that TV show.
POLITICO: Is there a lack of awareness about the geopolitical risks we face in Italy and Europe?
Calenda: Absolutely. We [Azione, Calenda’s liberal-centrist party] proposed a bill called the Democratic Shield, which requires intelligence services to produce a detailed report on Russian infiltration and financing in the media through newspaper subscriptions, company sponsorships or political funding. We need evidence, because democracy is freedom, but also responsibility.
The election in Romania has shown that today there is a situation where, you can invest millions of euros in social media to manipulate or subvert democracy. We must prevent this … Today, almost no country has mechanisms for that.
POLITICO: How does your proposed law address this issue?
Calenda: It requires a joint report from Agcom [Italy’s national regulatory authority for the communications industries] on social media trends, and from intelligence services, on anomalous funding by companies linked to Moscow. This was also a proposal we voted on in the European Parliament. Today, there’s a clear need for legislation against foreign interference, particularly from Russia and China.
POLITICO: We’ve talked about the level of debate on Italian TV, but in your view is this a trend that’s also happening in other European countries?
Calenda: Of course. My intervention got attention because many are tired of hearing the same lies. Statements distorted by the Kremlin, like the claim that the U.S. helped Ukraine to overthrow its government, are repeated across European media without journalists ever saying, “This is a lie; it has been disproven.”
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