«States Lacking Independent Information Production Are Losing Sovereignty»: Interview with Basque-Russian Journalist Pablo González

Original article: «Los Estados que no tengan producción propia de información están perdiendo soberanía»: Entrevista con periodista vasco-ruso Pablo González

By Denis Rogatyuk

The case of journalist Pablo González has become one of the most emblematic stories in the Ukraine conflict.

A Basque-born communicator, González, who was born in Moscow, had extensive experience as a journalist in the Basque Country, Ukraine, and ultimately in Poland, where he was arrested by Polish authorities on unfounded charges of collaborating with the Russian State Security. He spent more than two years as a political prisoner without formal charges against him.

He was finally released through negotiations with Russia in a prisoner exchange in August 2024 and currently resides in Moscow. Denis Rogatyuk sat down with him to discuss his arrest, his views on independent journalism, and his sense of identity as both Basque and Russian.

Let’s start by talking a bit about you. Your story is quite unique. Were you born here in Moscow?

Yes, I was born into a mixed family; my father is Russian and my mother is part Basque, part Spanish, and part Russian. When I was a child, my parents divorced, and my mother and I moved to Spain. We lived in the Basque Country and then in Catalonia. Basically, since the age of nine, I’ve been living on the Iberian Peninsula, where I was educated, completing school, high school, and university, all in Catalan since I lived in Catalonia.

Then, I spent two years studying abroad in Poland, and as an adult, I pursued several master’s programs: one in Journalism in the Basque Country and another in International Relations and Security at the University of Granada. Since graduating in 2005, I worked various jobs for a year and a half, including as a waiter and a hotel receptionist, before transitioning into communications and journalism. Initially, I focused on online content and entertainment, but starting around 2009-2010, after completing my journalism master’s, I began working as a professional journalist.

I’ve mainly collaborated with media outlets from the Basque Country. My journalistic home was initially the newspaper Gara, as well as the website Naiz and the Sunday supplement Salpica. Gradually, in addition to writing, I specialized in Eastern Europe, Russia, the post-Soviet space, and the Balkans. I’ve always been interested in international relations. I’ve rarely covered culture or sports, focusing mainly on international politics and economics, which have always fascinated me and that I understand well.

Over the years, my portfolio expanded. I collaborated with print and digital media, producing video, photography, audio, and radio, encompassing a bit of everything. At the peak of my career, I had been working on Ukraine since 2014, along with some other countries, but Ukraine provided the most work. I believe that among Spanish journalists who speak Spanish, I was the one who understood the situation best. I was one of the few who had been on both frontlines, with valuable contacts. Well, at that peak moment, when I had accumulated ten years of experience, I was arrested in Poland, accused of collaboration with the Russian state…

Before we dive deeper into your story, I would like to ask: were there other motivations behind your journalism? Because obviously, it is dangerous work.

Journalism is one of the few things you can do nowadays while still being naive. The traditional notion of journalism is that you do it to make the world a better place. By reporting what is happening, people become more informed and can make better decisions: they can decide who to vote for, what actions to take, and what to protest against. For example, if you explain what is happening in Gaza, people might pressure their governments to impose an arms embargo against Israel. If you’re explaining what is going on, in theory, you’re there to improve the world. That is my main motivation.

I have always tried to do fairly alternative journalism and have collaborated little with large media outlets because with alternative ones, I was granted freedom and more space to do what I wanted. Freedom has always been something I valued. That’s my motivation, but I also enjoy the work; it’s the field where I was born, and I believe there is a significant gap in information regarding the post-Soviet space in Spanish. It’s astonishing in such a globalized world, where everything can be translated, yet there are gaps; there are few connections. We don’t have many journalists who are one of those connections. The generations of mixed families who also understand both realities haven’t grown much yet.

Ultimately, if someone from your reality explains in your language what is happening elsewhere, it is easier to relate; it builds more trust. I wanted to provide more understanding, perhaps also following my Soviet education in kindergarten, to try to create a more just, egalitarian world where we are all brothers and sisters. I found many things absurd that were said about Russia, things I also experienced myself growing up: being portrayed as savages, drunks, uncultured individuals, and inferior—similar to the current situation with the Western propaganda reminiscent of neo-Nazi styles.

I wanted there to be more awareness, to serve as a kind of bridge and explain what was happening here. I never chose to be a war journalist; I reported on a conflict zone, but that’s not my calling. I haven’t gone to many conflicts that took place during this time, and others have: Libya, Syria, the protests in Egypt or Turkey, the refugee crisis in Greece. I contribute little to those issues because I don’t speak the language and don’t have much knowledge, but I do speak Russian, understand Ukrainian, and speak Polish.

What was the period of your arrest like?

I was under arrest for more than two years. Half the time I spent in solitary confinement. They employ various tactics to see what disturbs you the most, what breaks you psychologically. Half of my time was solitary, the other half I was with someone. I spent nine months straight in solitary confinement, while the remaining time varied. The pretext for my detention was my alleged collaboration with the Russian state, but they couldn’t present any evidence—none whatsoever. The evidence they presented was my dual nationality, which was known since my Russian family has lived in the Basque Country or Catalonia, and my Basque or Catalan family has been in Russia.

It’s absurd. I have the documentation. Since my parents divorced, I have different last names: my father’s last name on the Russian documents and my mother’s last name on the Spanish ones. This was presented as significant evidence, while the Spanish government is fully aware of this fact. It’s in my birth certificate; there’s nothing extraordinary about it, yet it was disseminated as misinformation.

They say I’ve been talking to someone or other. Okay, it’s normal for a journalist, but where are the secrets I supposedly stole? What photographs have I taken of secret or strategic installations? They claim I have photographs of a power plant near Warsaw. Those images and videos are entirely public resources, published by the Spanish news agency EFE and used by Televisión Española. They’re nothing special. You can find that plant in much greater detail on Google Maps. What’s the crime in photographing a power plant in 2020-2021 because there was information about coal in Poland?

These accusations are nonsensical. They say that I interviewed and have professional ties with opposition figures in Russia. Well, yes, I’ve interviewed them and written about them. There are countless pieces of work of mine, but I’ve talked to many more people. They have presented no evidence whatsoever. They didn’t even present me with a formal accusation. I spent two and a half years like this, and they presented an accusation two weeks after I was released, after being in Russia. I was in limbo for two and a half years.

In Anglo-Saxon media, it was reported that Poland had not convicted me, which is highly absurd, as anyone who can read Wikipedia knows that one of the fundamental aspects of any prisoner exchange is that there must be a conviction. No state can exchange someone who hasn’t been convicted, because fundamentally, you are taking someone and kidnapping them, which is what the Polish state did with me.

Why did they do it? Because Poland is a state where justice is nonexistent; it is entirely dependent on politics. Polish justice is fully politicized, serving the powers that be. For example, in Spain, it would have been more difficult. If they had evidence, they would have arrested me in Spain, but since they lacked evidence, they took advantage of my situation in Poland to arrest me there because it’s a state without the rule of law.

And all for what? To remove me from the equation. At the critical moment when a campaign of Western propaganda about Russian intervention in Ukraine was underway. They knew full well that no one understood that issue better than I did in Spanish, and that the topic isn’t as they present it through the four journalists from Spain who align with Western propaganda, which is simply disgraceful. They knew that with me, that couldn’t happen, since I have always operated independently.

They probably would’ve sent those journalists packing, so that’s why they did what they did to me. They’ve taken several years of my life, deprived me of time with my children, and robbed me of years of work. I would have made a fortune during that time because such work pays tremendously well. They did this without acknowledging that they’re simply censoring me. I believe that in the future it will be revealed that they essentially branded me as an agent of influence, which means someone who is listened to.

Any person whom people listen to, if what they say isn’t in line with the official narrative of the established power, is likely to be sidelined. For example, in Spain, much of what is communicated in the mainstream Spanish media is a copy-and-paste job from Anglo-Saxon agencies. I’ll say it again: countries or states lacking their own information production are losing sovereignty.

Let’s delve deeper into this subject. How do you envision independent alternative journalists or media developing in this new context, with AI on one side but also seeing these media outlets following the lines set by corporate Anglo-Saxon outlets?

What we do is challenging because they politically limit our access to many locations. If you and I attempt to work in Ukraine, we would likely end up dead. At best, we would endure terrible torture. We might confess to the assassination of JFK even though we were born twenty or thirty years later, and then we’d be buried in quicklime. That is the best-case scenario, and things could easily be worse.

Our access is denied. The large media outlets practice self-censorship because they rely partly on funding from large Anglo-Saxon corporations: Google, Facebook, etc. They control the narrative. We face significant limitations, but despite this, there is room for maneuver. The way forward is to work as well as we can, but especially to specialize in specific topics so that people understand that we are a reliable source.

When people see and understand that we are a reference, they start to listen to us. Nowadays, there are self-funding systems. There are also media outlets with which you can collaborate without going through all the hoops. I have previously collaborated with Iranian, German, and some Russian media. You can diversify your income sources and, most importantly, create a solid network to disseminate your message. It’s not easy by any means. As I say, once we start gaining traction, if we become an influential voice, they’ll come for us. They use our own «companions» against us, as they are not truly companions if they are participating in a war against us. So, it’s about persevering and not getting discouraged.

What do you see as the future of independent journalism?

I think it’s crucial to keep working and not lose hope. Just as we might be in the toughest moment now, rays of sunshine are starting to peek through the clouds. We’ve seen many of the things we’ve mentioned begin to be accepted and not debated as much. Years ago, when I claimed that the alleged Maidan revolution was a coup, I was called a conspiracy theorist. I stood on Maidan myself, spoke with numerous people, including oligarchs and politicians. Years have passed, and now the politicians themselves are saying they funded it.

The same applies to the secret laboratories of the United States in Ukraine: previously, we were deemed crazy, and now even Americans are acknowledging that they had laboratories and feared they might fall into Russian hands. Over time, the truth has been vindicated.

It’s true that there are also conspiracy theories that try to align with our message, but these individuals are capable of propagating narratives that the earth is flat or that women have no rights. They attempt to lump us all together and label us extremists, whether leftist or right-wing; they call us opportunists. But gradually, people are realizing this, as their standard of living declines, prompting them to question why this is happening. They see that those of us who predicted that this decline would occur were right.

It’s difficult to become mainstream, but if we don’t try, it certainly won’t happen. Therefore, we must continue working and also seek out synergies with others in various countries: trying to understand Iranians, Chinese, Brazilians, Venezuelans, Argentinians, Americans, French, Italians, Spaniards, Germans, and Ukrainians.

Everywhere there are people, there are alternative voices, critical voices. In some cases, like in Ukraine, these individuals are risking their lives. In others, there is a bit more freedom, but to a certain extent. In some European countries, like the Baltic states or Poland, there is no freedom at all for alternative perspectives. They might not throw you in jail, but they exile you, take away your job, ruin you, leaving you with no means to survive. If you are young and lack family obligations, you can seek alternative paths, but if you bear the responsibility for others, that’s far more challenging. In that sense, it’s tough, but I believe it’s achievable.

Do you feel more Basque or Russian? How does each side of your family inspire and energize you?

I feel both ways. I don’t have to choose. I try to embrace the best aspects and peculiarities from each side: the honesty and work ethic of Euskal Herria and the profound history and connection to the roots; and from Russian history, the perseverance—no matter how tough the conditions are, you can push forward.

We must not be discouraged; we need to work. Nothing is impossible. By collaborating as a team and as a society, we can make progress. I try to absorb the best lessons from both sides. I don’t have to choose, nor do I want to. Right now, I don’t have the opportunity to travel to Euskal Herria, but I still keep in touch; my heart and mind remain with it.

Finally, what is the most crucial message that independent and alternative journalists should communicate about Russia to break through the media block created by the West?

Essentially, we must tell the truth: understand Russia, comprehend the Russian perspective, and from that standpoint, we mustn’t shy away from ideologies, discrimination, or prejudices. We need to explain what Russians feel, what they live, and how everything is from their perspective. This understanding of Russians externally would provide many clues to solving any issues.

We need to escape neo-Nazi style propaganda, combat the discrimination that suggests Russians are an Asian people or inferior. I wish they were an Asian people, because countries like China, Singapore, and Indonesia are remarkable Asian nations. Development does not have to be Eurocentric, something which Russia is starting to realize.

The world needs to see this. It’s imperative to communicate that Russia is open; it’s not seeking to dominate anyone. Russia primarily aims to protect itself and guarantee its security, but not at the expense of others. And it is open to fair partnerships with all: respectful, mutual interests, and cooperation beneficial to everyone. Countries that label themselves as Western or developed export at high prices while importing at low costs. Russia cannot play that game. Fair pricing can be established for all; agreements can be reached because no nation is superior or inferior. We are partners, and we share one planet.

By Denis Rogatyuk