In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a Canadian lawyer and politician, Dimitri Lascaris (@dimitrilascaris). He's best-known for parroting the Kremlin propaganda regarding NATO expansion and the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, and for traveling to Russia amidst the war.
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Dimitri refers to himself as an "ecosocialist" and has been previously active in the Canadian Green Party. In 2020 he was a candidate for leading the group, but lost the final vote 50-42%. One of his campaign people was @RadDesai, whose known for organizing conferences..
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...that promote the interests of both the Russian and Chinese governments. Before this, Dima was working for the Real News, a pro-Kremlin blog that platforms people like Scott Ritter and Lawrence Wilkerson. Wilkerson is best-known for his anti-Semitism and calling the...
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..Ghouta chemical attack a "false flag operation" orchestrated by Israel. Ritter, on the other hand, is best-known for exposing his genitals to a police officer he thought was a 15-year-old girl.
On 19 Mar 2022, a month after Russia started their brutal attack in Ukraine,..
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...Lascaris suggested that Ukraine shouldn't defend themselves as it'll probably result in the "destruction of one's country," and that the rational course would actually "pursue compromise" with Russia.
His takes on history could come directly from the Kremlin...
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His takes on history could come directly from the Kremlin. First of all, he states in one of his blog posts that in 2014 Crimea "merged" with Russia - no mention of the illegal annexation, little green men, none of that. Then he refers to a news article from TASS that...
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.."97% of voters reportedly supported Crimea's reunification with Russia," a sham vote that was condemned by basically everyone other than Russia.
Dima's reasoning for Russia's genocidal war in Ukraine is based on two of the most used Kremlin narratives: 1) NATO expansion..
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...and the broken promise to Gorbachev (which, based on Gorbachev, was never even made), and 2) the "US-facilitated coup" and the infiltration of "neo-Nazis" in Ukraine in 2014.But with the latter he goes a few steps further: he states that what followed was a "right-wing,..
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..anti-Russian regime," providing absolutely no further explanation.
Lascaris' final conclusion immediately after Russia's full-scale invasion started was that: "An objective and fair-minded review of the historical record leads inexorably to the conclusion that Russia...
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...has legitimate grievances in this conflict," and later he declared that the evidence for the US and British governments actively provoking war in Ukraine is "overwhelming."
In Apr 2023, Dima traveled to Russia, where he had meetings with officials of the Russian...
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...Ministry of Foreign Affairs and gave a speech at the Valdai Conference. As a staunch supporter of peace between Russia and Ukraine, surely Lascaris spoke about the peace negotiations? Well, no - his speech was about the destabilization of the dollar and how Russia...
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...could compete with the dollar. Later, he admitted that some of his meetings during the trip were organized with the Russian Embassy in Ottawa, Canada, and his old fiend Desai and campaign worker also joined the Valdai meeting.
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While in Russia, he visited various Kremlin-funded "NGO's" that provide nonlethal equipment and firearms accessories to the Russian troops. One of these organizations, We Are Together – Sevastopol, is presented to the Westerners as an NGO that "helps refugees".
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The group's leader, Victoria Kashlyakova, admits that they also provide the invaded areas with propaganda materials such as board games praising Mother Russia.
On his way to Crimea, Lascaris also interviewed a PMC Wagner sniper called "Sokol". Ironically, his hate for...
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.."neo-Nazis" doesn't extend to the Russian ones, as he doesn't offer a single shred of criticism towards the mercenary group and its affiliations and history of literal neo-Nazis like Alexei Milchakov and Dmitry Utkin.
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As a human rights activists, Dima speaks very little of actual human rights violations in Ukraine. I couldn't find any of his commentary on the Bucha massacre, mass graves, torture and castration in Izium or the FSB-run children's torture chambers in Kherson.
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He hasn't mentioned the 700 000 Ukrainian children abducted by the Russians, which by international law constitutes as a genocide. @dimitrilascaris, you must have written about these topics, maybe you can point me to the tweets and/or articles?
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Lascaris has also been very critical of Ukraine's Zelensky. In Jul 2022, he posted an article criticizing the Ukrainian president, calling him an "anti-hero" who has "degraded whatever democracy existed in Ukraine." He also blames Zelensky for his ties to oligarch...
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...Ihor Kolomoyskyi, whose Ukrainian citizenship Zelensky later stripped, and whose assets the Ukrainian state has also nationalized. He preaches about the corruption in Ukraine, and how Zelensky has been unable to prevent it. This corruption is a remnant of the...
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..Soviet history, and Zelensky has taken impressive measures to reduce it. Actively fighting corruption while you're being attacked by a genocidal maniac is probably quite challenging, so we can probably judge Ukraine's battle against corruption only after Russia has been..
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..driven away from the country. Now, how about the country that Dima has praised and recently visited? In the 2022 Corruption Index, Russia was at the 137th place.
As an "ecosocialist", Dimitri is a staunch supporter of Russia, one of the biggest exporter of fossil fuels.
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He also hasn't said a word of Russia's ecocide in Ukraine, resulting in the destruction of Ukraine's flora and fauna and also its cultural heritage sites.
To conclude, Dima is a classic Kremlin propagandist touting the "not one inch eastward" and "US-orchestrated coup" BS.
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He seems to openly support Russia's genocidal war in Ukraine, and hasn't criticized it after the initial days of the invasion. His prospects to do anything meaningful in Canada are probably over, and in my view Dima is a potential future resident of the Russian Federation.
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And yes, I know I said I'd stop #vatniksoup, but the vatniks spring up like mushrooms, and these networks need to be exposed.
So, as long as there are vatniks and people who read my silly threads, I'll continue doing this work.
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Sources:
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youtube.com/@TheSoupCentral
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And Dima,let me ask one more thing: If James Baker's verbal promise to "not expand NATO eastwards" (that referred to East Germany, by the way) should be respected,what about Putin's statement that Crimea is Ukraine? I mean, if not, then we can probably agree that Putin is a liar?
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