Two years ago, Pablo González descended the airplane stairs that took him back to Moscow, the city where he was born under the name Pavel Rubtsov. Behind him were almost two and a half years of captivity in Poland accused of espionage. Upon setting foot on Russian soil, he shook hands with President Vladimir Putin. In that image that went viral worldwide, Pablo wore a Star Wars t-shirt that said “Your empire needs you.” Today, a portrait of Darth Vader accompanies him in his latest incarnation, that of a Russian propaganda YouTuber with a new channel that sounds appealing to communists and fascists: Radio Roja Parda, described as an “alternative” information space that “does not conform to and does not reproduce the narrative of the big traditional media sold (sic) to the system.” In reality, his discourse has never been more constrained by the Putinist narrative.
On screen, González wears a t-shirt with an anarchy symbol but defends a Putinist regime before the camera that is the opposite of that utopia: central authority reaches every city, punishes what is written on social media, censors what appears in the media, bans demonstrations, limits internet access, and puts its citizens on blacklists. “I am Pablo González, it is no secret that I am also Pavel… it is my name in both versions, Russian or Spanish. I am a journalist, political scientist, and I have a more left-wing version… I don’t want to confuse it with the word liberal, because it has lost part of the meaning it had before,” he explains to the audience, among whom the far right will feel perfectly comfortable. Because so far, in his new space, he has mainly shared the screen with ultra-conservative figures who use the microphone to warn against “illegal immigration,” “LGBT propaganda,” and the degradation of a “Godless” Europe.
He has been living for two years in an apartment north of Moscow, with high ceilings, gray curtains, and close to the metro. On his phone, he stays well informed about the heavily censored Russian current events, watching Spain win the World Cup and feeling a pang in his heart every time there is a prisoner of war exchange between Russia and Ukraine: “Being a prisoner is one of the worst things that can happen to a person”, he says with firsthand knowledge.
“Life is very good here in Russia, but they manage to sell it abroad like they do in the US with the American Dream, which is a falsehood.” After two winters harsher than those in Nabarniz (the small town in Biscay where he started a family during the last decade) but better than those he faced in the Polish cell, from which he emerged with lung sequelae, he has gained some weight, looks healthier, and has gotten used to Moscow, where he was “very happy” as a child and now is a hostage because of the Polish justice system, which awaits him for trial and can claim him at any moment if he sets foot in a European Union country.
In Warsaw, the last city where he lived, his dedication to Russia continues to stir public debate and the collateral damage multiplies. During the years in which, according to numerous indications (his reports in Russian about dissidents, his trips with Russian intelligence officers, his various alibis before friends), González not only passed information to the Russian military intelligence service GRU, but also recorded his sexual encounters with some of the women he spied on or used to spy. Those videos are in the hands of the Polish justice system, exposed to being leaked as happened with some parts of the investigation, and have unleashed a witch hunt in which representatives of Polish nationalism take advantage to accuse liberal-spectrum journalists of having slept with “the Russian spy”, some of whom never even met him in person.
A STRANGE ILLEGAL
Illegal spies are trained to pass themselves off as nationals of the country where they are sent. González is a strange case: among his friends in the Basque Country, he was already known as Pavel or The Russian. In the early hours of February 28, 2022, González was arrested in Przemyl. He faced a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, and for more than two years Poland did not make the evidence public nor set a trial date. Several of González’s reports even refer to the “Center,” a term used by Russian services to designate their headquarters. But part of the legal problem could be due to the fact that Polish legislation in force at the time of his arrest required proving that he had caused damage to the Polish state, while much of his alleged espionage would have taken place in other countries.
“The intelligence sources I have spoken to and some of the documents about the case seem to support the idea that he was not an innocent journalist who sometimes collaborated, but something much closer to an operative of the Russian secret services,” explains Shaun Walker, British journalist and author of The Illegals, who met Pablo in the last decade.
“MY THING IS RUNNING THROUGH THE TRENCHES”
That August 1, 2024, when Pablo was Pavel and regained freedom returning to the Russian dictatorship, Putin embraced and thanked the services rendered to the exchanged Russians. They were mainly newly discovered spies, hitmen caught killing, and Kremlin-connected criminals. “They will receive state decorations”, he promised.
For Pablo, at least publicly, that decoration did not arrive. But he did get a new life in Moscow. The media portray him as “Russian-Spanish,” he prefers to say he is “Basque-Russian.” “I have lived much of my life between Euskal Herria and Catalonia. Now in Russia, I continue doing the same: journalism, international analysis, geopolitical topics, with a perspective of the Soviet heritage, left-wing, anti-colonialism, and always antifascism… my profile is more about running through the trenches,” he boasts after witnessing wars like those in Ukraine or Nagorno-Karabakh.
For years he presented himself as an anti-system figure, who from an unusual itinerant correspondent post for the Basque regional media Gara told what the big media kept silent about… although he ended up collaborating with some of them. He does not like to be reminded of it much. “I worked for a while at La Sexta. I was young and needed money, I am not proud,” he responds when criticized for his mainstream past.
Those who know him agree that during this time he has gone from his usual illiberal cynicism to a stance totally devoted to Russian imperialist nationalism. When someone privately or on the internet reproaches him that Russia should stay within its borders instead of expanding like the Third Reich, González responds like a good Putinist fighter: “Russia is advancing towards its borders, and it will get there.”
During these two years, he has traveled through Russian provinces. Some days he could not make his live connections to report that life in Russia is better than in the West because “they had cut 3G on the street”, a setback that later, before the camera during his connections with the Russian propagandist Liu Sivaya, he calls “nonsense.” She, broadcasting from a dark and increasingly isolated Crimea due to persistent Ukrainian attacks, responds with a flash of honesty: “Tell the truth, we had scheduled live broadcasts but it was impossible due to power outages.” “Otherwise, we are winning the war,” they conclude with good humor.
In Poland, the storm caused by his case has not subsided. Sources familiar with the investigation confirm that Rubtsov recorded some of his sexual encounters with different lovers. Those video files are part of the material gathered by the Polish investigation, along with abundant personal information about women González allegedly monitored or included in his reports.
THE ‘SEXTAPES’
The women appearing naked in the recordings fear the material will leave the case file. “I am already resigned to it”, one has said in her circle. The fear has worsened because documents, personal data, and investigation details have already circulated in media and social networks.
The case has also mixed with intense Polish political polarization. From conservative sectors, a campaign has been unleashed against journalists and analysts linked to the liberal space, accused without evidence of having slept with González. One of those targeted is researcher and journalist Anna Mierzyska. The Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation for defamation after several accounts spread messages presenting her as his lover. “This could be a side effect of the extreme polarization of public opinion in Poland, and could be related to the activity of trolls who, using anonymous accounts, feed this polarization,” explains Jarek Jakimczyk, specialized in counterintelligence.
Cezary Gmyz and Piotr Gociek published in Do Rzeczy that it was suspected Rubtsov had documented his relationships and added that copies would have already been sent to Moscow. Several investigators believe that material would function as kompromat, reserved to discredit or blackmail journalists, activists, or future political leaders. The presence of copies in Moscow and their possible use have not been publicly confirmed by a court.
Unaffected by these storms, Pablo/Pavel’s Radio Roja Parda struggles to reach 800 subscribers. He records with good technical means thanks to a budget that allows renting a studio and operator. Loyalties still prevail, and while Russian espionage commemorated the 100th anniversary of the death of Felix Dzerzhinski (founder of the Cheka, the Bolshevik political police that turned terror into an ordinary instrument), González contributed with an elegy in which he defended that “Dzerzhinski was not a butcher.” After all, “the Cheka fought the enemies of the Soviet state, an enemy highly financed from the West… life comes full circle, we are back to the same,” he says referring to the Russian opposition, whose leaders (with whom Pablo shared drunkenness when passing information) have been assassinated, imprisoned, or forced into exile by the Kremlin.
The invasion of Ukraine, which González cannot call by its name, has put many Russians’ lives in jeopardy. But also those of propagandists, forced to say one thing and the opposite. In his duets with the heavily tattooed blonde Liu Sivaya, both produce content favorable to a war they did not see coming, did not expect to last so long, and do not know what it needs for Russia to declare it over.
The discourse is both triumphalist and victimizing: in the fourth year of the war, they repeat that Kiev cannot win, but do not abandon the argument that Ukraine is a threat. They criticize liberalism and the democratic aspirations of Ukrainians (“with democracy they won’t eat” he boasts) but denounce that there are so many fascists in Ukraine, acknowledging that for some reason they have no electoral support. Pablo assures that Russia’s attacks are localized, almost surgical, but minutes later they revel in a “devastated Kiev,” with “entire neighborhoods razed.”
With or without war, he is happy communicating again. “It is evident that Pablo had talent for making people feel comfortable and earning their trust,” recalls Russian writer Alisa Ganieva, who met Pablo in Germany when he was passing as a journalist: “In my case, he told me he had read my novel and was deeply impressed, although it is impossible to know if that was true.”
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