Troll of the Month: Laert Vasili

The Balkan Troll of the Month is an individual, a group of individuals or a media outlet that spreads hate based on gender, ethnicity, religion, or other diversity categories. The Balkan Troll is selected based on hate speech incidents identified across the Western Balkan region.

On 10 February 2026, during the recording of Përputhen on Top Channel, actor, film and theatre director and political commentator, Laert Vasili, forcibly kissed contestant Esmeralda without her consent during a studio debate. The act followed his statement that there was “only one way to shut a woman up.” He stood up, grabbed her head, kissed her, and remarked that it was “that simple.” 

Esme appeared visibly shocked and later stated she did not expect or accept the act. A male contestant minimized the incident by citing Vasili’s profession as an actor. Moderator Megi Pojani intervened, stating that no one in the studio is kissed without permission, and Vasili was asked to leave. 

Although the episode was pre-recorded, the production later broadcast and promoted it widely, generating extensive public debate. Online reactions ranged from framing the act as sexual harassment to victim-blaming narratives targeting Esme, reflecting broader gendered hostility and normalisation of non-consensual behaviour in media contexts. 

The act itself, a non-consensual physical contact and forced kiss, is an act of gender-based violence aired on live television. The act was not ambiguous flirtation, staged romantic interaction, or mutual contact. It was a unilateral action performed in a power-imbalanced setting: an older male opinionist approaching a seated female contestant during a debate and physically restraining her head before kissing her. This does not only constitute a violation of privacy and consent but equally of bodily autonomy alongside public humiliation and gendered assertion of dominance framed as a symbolic reinforcement of the idea that women’s bodies are available for performative demonstration.

The phrase “only one way to shut a woman up” immediately followed by a forced kiss, transforms the act from impulsive misconduct into a symbolic gesture of silencing through physical control. Even if framed as “demonstration,” the act visually reinforces a patriarchal trope: that women can be subdued physically for rhetorical effect. An act like this cannot be justified through the argument of ‘actor privilege’ nor any other type of justification. Professional identity does not protect an individual from the acts they perform towards others which violates their personal autonomy and consent. An argument like this implicitly suggests: The woman failed to understand art; The audience failed to understand the metaphor; The problem is interpretation, not violation.  This is a classic discursive minimization strategy.

 Furthermore, the fact that some male contestants attempted to minimalise the situation and soften the act serves to justify and normalise such behaviour. When misconduct is debated as interpretative rather than unequivocally unacceptable, the threshold for recognising harassment becomes blurred.

Although the moderator did apologise and asked Vasili to leave the studio, the fact remains that the production went on to publish the footage, promote the episode and amplify the incident across media platforms. It was both their role and responsibility to react in situations such as these when acts of gender base violence occur which they failed to so and instead, provided a platform for the amplification of this behaviour. As a result, the comment section was flooded by gendered harassment and victim blaming with a split social media reaction discourse with some condemning Vasili whilst others targeted Esme directly, blaming her.  The comments targeted towards Esme claimed that women provoke their own harassment, emotional reaction invalidates harm and that women in the public sphere deserve public humiliation.

All in all, the entire incident was unjustifiable, from the act itself to the lack of intervention and appropriate response from Top Channel’s production team to the wave of gender-based violent commentary online. At every level, there was a failure to respond adequately to something that should never have happened in the first place.