In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American propagandist and podcaster, Donbass Devushka. She's best-known for her fake Russian identity, for her pro-Russian podcast, and for spreading false, pro-Russian narratives on social media.
1/23
Donbass Devushka wasn't always working under this pseudonym - during the summer of 2022, her alias was Mila Medvedev or @LuganskforLife (and also CheburekiVibes, MeatballSubZero, YuGopnik, GhostofLugansk).
2/23
While active under this account, she's posted several photos of herself, and confirmed working also under the pseudonym "Donbass Devushka" through a link to her post on Patreon.
3/23
In the past, she's stated that she's a "poor woman from Luhansk", but she's actually just a regular Yankee girl, living in Oak Harbor, Washington. She's originally from New Jersey and was married from 2011 until 2021.
4/23
Perhaps as an attempt to become more credible, she's changed her real name to a Russian sounding one at the end of Mar 2023.
5/23
Before she was working for a shop that sold tropical fish, but after the war started, she must've smelled a good niche for making some extra money, and started creating pro-Russian propaganda on various social media channels.
6/23
The Donbass Devushka YouTube channel was created in Jul, 2022, and @LuganskforLife Twitter account followed after one month. The YouTube channel is actually a collective of various people doing interviews and podcasts, and boy oh boy, do these interviews stink of vatnik.
7/23
Her Telegram channel was also one of the first places where the doctored leaks of Jack Teixeira were detected. These fakes had decreased Russian military losses drastically, while the Ukrainian ones were increased.
8/23
Many of them have been covered in earlier #vatniksoup threads, including Jackson "Z" Hinkle, Eva Bartlett, Scott Ritter and Gonzalo Lira. In these podcasts, "Devushka" fakes a terrible Russian accent, which she forgets to do every now and then.
9/23
The contents of the podcast are exactly as you'd imagine, full of BS like "Ukrainian Nazis", bioweapons labs, multipolar world, praise of Putin, mockery of the West, NATO and Joe Biden... basic vatnikology 101.
10/23
But there's nothing new in people ditching their old life and becoming propagandists for dirty Russian money, it's happened with people like Z-Hinkle, Mike "iEarlGrey" Jones, Karin Kneissl... in these circles, Devushka is still just a nobody. But what is much more...
11/23
...interesting in this case, is how her real identity was discovered. The whole operation was conducted by Shiba Inu unit of the #NAFO battallion. The identity of Devushka had been under scrutiny for long time, and finally they could piece the whole thing together to ...
12/23
...find out her real identity as a Jersey girl. The group noticed that some trolls had trolled Devushka's account by calling her by her real name. They then found out that she was married before, and found old photos of her from Facebook.
13/23
With this information, they identified her home address, and compared photos from her social media accounts to other open source images of her alleged address - and they matched. They even managed to get a confirmation through a reflection from the sunglasses she was ...
14/23
...wearing, and from the color of the wall paint her house has. Then they tracked her marriage certificate to find her birth date, and it matched with the one she posted on her Telegram channel.
15/23
Finally, they obtained a video of her working for the tropical fish joint and matched her voice to Devushka's, just without the fake Russian accent.
16/23
Of course this tactical unit also looked into her family tree: she's stated that in addition to being Russian, she's also Jewish. By referring to her Jewish heritage, she had a free pass to criticize Jews for pretty much everything (which is exactly what she did).
17/23
But of course there was neither Russian or Jewish blood in her, which was proved by looking at her parent's names in her marriage certificate.
18/23
So, one of the biggest pro-Russian disinformation and propaganda pushers online claimed to be a Russian-Jew from Luhansk, but actually turned out to be a divorced, middle-aged woman from Jersey. But that's not all: there's still the money she's been collecting through...
19/23
...various donation channels. On her TG channel, she's stated that all the funds go towards charity, for example to Mariupol, and to "Donbassian refugees in Rostov". For collecting donations, Devushka used several channels, including BuyMeACoffee, crypto wallets and Locals.
20/23
She's also collaborated with Rybar, a Russian news outlet focusing on military analysis also connected to Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Now here's a problem that Devushka might be facing: Russia is heavily sanctioned, and in case to fundraising efforts were real, she's potentially...21/23
...violated them. If they weren't then it's a regular fraud.The Shiba Inus also checked her crypto wallets,and noticed that they had received funds on several occasions, but there were no traces of money being sent out. Based on this evidence, I'd go with the 'fraud' option.22/23
As of today, Donbass Devushka's account @PelmeniPusha has been suspended.
Big thanks to #NAFO for their incredible work.
23/23
Support my work: buymeacoffee.com/PKallioniemi
Past soups: vatniksoup.com
Related soups:
Jackson Hinkle:
Scott Ritter:
Gonzalo Lira:
CORRECTION: Her account @PeImeniPusha is still active, but the tweets are protected. Also, she's blocked me. :(
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.