Hey, everyone, it's Reid. Before we get started, just want to make sure that you're following along with the Lincoln project on all of our coverage regarding the January 6th Committee hearings.

Testimony has been explosive. The evidence has been damning against Donald Trump and his attempt to steal the 2020 election.

I hope you'll follow us and understand just how close we were to losing it all. And now on with the show.

Welcome back to the Lincoln project. I'm your host, Reid Gailan.

Today, I'm pleased to be joined by Deep Mar Peacler, political adviser and media literacy expert.

He's also the co-founder of Vienna Goes Europe, a nonpartisan, pro-democratic pro-European association, as well as the programmatic director for the Center for Digital Media Literacy, where one of his latest campaigns investigates Russian disinformation in relation to Ukraine and Europe as a whole.

Today, he is coming to us from Vienna, Austria, and Deep Mar, you might be our longest distance guest yet, so welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. It's a great honor to be here.

So, Deep Mar, today I want to talk about how crucial it is to have media literacy as a defense against disinformation and autocracy.

But first, I want to talk about the 2022 G7 summit and the recent Madrid NATO summit, and take this opportunity to get a sense of the state of the European region as a whole, especially in regards to Ukraine.

So, in the summit's last week, much of the pro-democratic world publicly reaffirmed their support of Ukraine and condemned Russia for its invasion.

President Biden here in the U.S. is vowed that both America and its NATO allies will stay with Ukraine as long as it takes.

But there have been some reports behind the scenes of conversations that indicate some European countries may be arenas unified in the mission as they're publicly portraying.

So, can you give us an overview of how you see it from your perch, you know, vis-a-vis Ukraine, and how you see Europe holding on to its sort of pro-democracy roots in the fight against Russia and all the misinformation and disinformation that comes with it?

Thank you very much. This is a good question, because if I would give an answer that is confusing, I would say, Eurobist-divided indeed.

But Europe is also united. What does it mean exactly? It sounds contradicting.

Europe is united in the sense that we condemn the Russian aggression against Ukraine. So, words are quite clear. We are crystal clear. Most of the time at least.

But if you take a look at smaller politicians, what MPs, for instance, in Austria, are posting on Facebook, then you see they are very heavily influenced by Russian narratives, by anti-Ukrainian narratives.

And this is the stakeholder view of the situation. So, if we speak about people who are actually decision-makers.

But when you compare, for instance, countries like Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, they have a very clear stance against Russia, also because of their history.

But they know what to do and they know what they are dealing with. If we take a look at France or Germany, it's quite different.

It's not only because of business relations with the Russian Federation, but it has also a lot to do with the disinformation campaign that Russia has engaging against Europe since 10 years,

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