Argyris Dinopoulos

Argyris Dinopoulos was born on 17 March 1956 to Vasilis and Maria Dinopoulos.

His father, from Trikala in Thessaly, was a retired brigadier of the Greek Army. In the war of 1940, as a first-year military cadet, he fled with his fellow cadets to Crete, where they fought the German invaders. During the Occupation he took to the mountains and joined the resistance. After retiring from the army, he devoted himself to literary translation. He translated — directly from the original Russian — plays and novels by Dostoevsky, Chekhov and other Russian classics. His translations were published in twelve volumes by well-known publishing houses.

His mother, Maria, from Metsovo, was a retired secondary-school teacher of home economics.

Argyris Dinopoulos developed a special bond with his grandfather, who was a notary in Trikala, Thessaly. The elder Argyris Dinopoulos — born in 1891 in Mouzaki, Karditsa — fought in the Balkan Wars and lived through the dramatic events of the National Schism.

For the grandson, those stories were his first encounter with modern Greek history and politics.

For Argyris Dinopoulos had the rare good fortune to hear from his grandfather and namesake the account of Eleftherios Venizelos’s historic speech in Syntagma Square on 5 September 1910, at which the elder Argyris Dinopoulos, then nineteen, was present.

And from his father, Vasilis Dinopoulos, the account of the equally historic speech by Georgios Papandreou in the same square on 18 October 1944, at the liberation of Athens, at which Vasilis Dinopoulos, then twenty-one, was also present.

Argyris Dinopoulos spent his childhood in various Greek cities, as his father’s military postings obliged the family — mother and three children — to follow him.

Through primary school and the early years of secondary school he also attended catechism classes. The principles of Christian and Greek education thus shaped his character and value system from a very young age. He graduated from the Leonteios Lyceum of Nea Smyrni in the summer of the Metapolitefsi — the restoration of democracy in 1974.

That same year, 1974, he passed the entrance examinations and enrolled at the Law School of the University of Athens. In 1978 he received his law degree and went on to pursue postgraduate studies abroad.

First at Paris 2 University, in commercial law; then at University College London, where in 1981 he earned his master’s degree (LL.M.) in the law of the socialist countries and the relationship between law and Marxism. His thesis, “International Socialist Law,” examined relations among the socialist countries from the October Revolution to the Brezhnev Doctrine.

He completed his military service as a reserve officer (1981–1984) and, as soon as he was discharged, began practising law.

He came to journalism by chance, in 1984, after succeeding in a competition for young reporters organised by a group of ERT journalists — but it grew into a great love. In 1984 he filed his first reports at ERT, which was, for him too, the great school of journalism and television.

And so it all began.

When private radio arrived in Greece, he went to work from its first day of operation (in 1988) at the radio station SKAI and, that same year, at the newspaper Apogevmatini. His work at SKAI led ERT to terminate his contract — at the time, radio was considered a competitor to television.

In 1992 he chose to leave ERT for the television channel SKAI (in 1993), then part of the Alafouzos publishing group, where he stayed until April 1994, when he continued his career at Antenna until 2002, the year he was elected mayor of Vrilissia. In that period he also worked, after Apogevmatini, at the newspapers Kathimerini (in 1993) and To Vima (1999–2001).

"Journalism & Reportage" in the Archive →

As a war correspondent, Argyris Dinopoulos covered armed conflicts of the last decade of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st, and was present at the world’s “major events” as a correspondent for ERT, SKAI and Antenna.

The fall of Ceaușescu (1989) and the Gulf War (1991) were the first “major events” and “armed conflicts” he covered.

From 1991 to 2001 he was present on every front of the wars that followed the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

Slovenia – Krajina – Croatia – Osijek – Vukovar – the siege of Sarajevo – Bosnia – Kosovo – the bombing of Serbia – Belgrade – Skopje – Tetovo.

The same in Albania, from the first multi-party elections (1991) to the most recent electoral contest (2025), and the armed uprisings (1997-1998) after the “pyramid” scandal

He was in Iraq again (in 1998 and 2003), while for two months (September-November 2001) he was in Northern Afghanistan for the Northern Alliance’s war against the Taliban after the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers.

In 1994 he covered the civil war in Rwanda and, the same year, the “Zapatistas” uprising in Mexico.

His reporting from Rwanda was done in the shadow of the 1994 genocide.

Major events he reported on were in Moscow in 1991 during the coup against Gorbachev, in Nairobi for the Öcalan affair (1999), in Genoa for the large demonstrations during the G-8 summit (2001) and (in 2024) in Syria for the fall of the Assad regime.

He covered earthquakes in Armenia (1989), Turkey (1992, 1999), Egypt (1992), India (1993), ecological disasters in the Shetland Islands (1993) and forest fires in Australia (1994)

"Dispatches from the front" in the Archive →

Alongside journalism, Argyris Dinopoulos also turned to writing — from war chronicles to historical and political fiction. From 1993 to 2025 he wrote five books inspired by his experiences in journalism and in politics.

• "Is This Sarajevo?" Korfi · 1993 · translated into English A chronicle of the siege of Sarajevo.
• "The War Cassette" Kastaniotis · 2001 A novel set during the Gulf War (1991), with two journalists as its protagonists ▸ Video about the book · 4:30
• "The Empty Wedding Dress" Kastaniotis · 2013 A historical novel about the secret love affair between Eleftherios Venizelos and Paraskevoula Bloom. ▸ Video about the book · 1:54
• "The Siemens Affair" Kastaniotis · 2014 A political novel based on the Siemens case. ▸ The book on SKAI · 0:21
• "It Was the Other Half-Year, You Fool!" Pedio · 2025 On his tenure at the Ministry of the Interior, and on the political backstage of the second half of 2014 that led to the events of the first half of 2015 ▸ The speech at the launch · 5:31

In 2002 he was elected Mayor of Vrilissia. In 2006 the then Prime Minister, Kostas Karamanlis, put him forward as a candidate for Regional Governor of Attica (the office then known as Super-Prefect). In 2007 he was elected Member of Parliament for Athens B as a New Democracy candidate, and was re-elected in 2009 and 2012. In June 2014 he was sworn in as Minister of the Interior.

His years in local government also saw the conversion of a former naval fort into a 5.2-hectare municipal park — one of the most tangible legacies of that tenure.

In the 2015 elections he was not elected to Parliament, nor was he re-elected Mayor of Vrilissia in the 2019 municipal elections.

"Politics" in the Archive →

After 2015 he worked in the private sector and in advertising — only to return, a few years later, to where he had begun.

Since 2021 he has produced a daily three-hour live news programme (07.00–10.00) on the Athens radio station ELLADA 94,3 FM. In 2024 he returned to television journalism, at Antenna TV (ANT1), covering the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. Since 2025 he has worked at OPEN TV, co-presenting the weekly international-affairs programme “Status Quo”. At the same station he does free reporting and investigative journalism (documentaries).