Thread by @P_Kallioniemi

In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll intoduce an Italian propagandist, Vittorio Nicola Rangeloni. He’s best-known for producing pro-Kremlin propaganda from Donbas for the Italian-speaking audience, and for breaking the Geneve conventions by interviewing prisoners of war.

1/19

Rango grew up in Lecco, Italy. His mother was Russian, and because of this young Vittorio was told about the virtues and wonders of Russkiy Mir and the superiority of the communist system.

2/19

In his early 20s, Rango was yet to discover his role in this world. He enjoyed traveling, and decided to take his humble savings of 3000 EUR to relocate to his dream destination in the newly formed and completely made-up Donetsk People’s Republic.

3/19

While there, he met Janus Putkonen, a Finnish master vatnik/propagandist in charge of now-closed Doni News and the largest Finnish pro-Kremlin fake news blog MV-Lehti. Janus took the young Italian under his wing, showing him the ropes of the daily "journalism" he was doing.
4/19

It’s worth noting, that Putkonen’s connection to the Kremlin was confirmed through the leaked e-mail dump Egorova Leaks, which showed that Janus received around 1200 monthly for his low-quality propaganda. More on Janus Putkonen here:



5/19

Vittorio, aged 24, aspired a similar path and got into reporting himself. Vito would later state the militia had enough soldiers, probably due to the generous funding coming from the Kremlin, but that there weren’t enough "journalists" to cover the Kremlin’s lies.

6/19

Both Putkonen and Rangeloni were featured in VICE’s 2017 documentary about rave parties in DPR, in which they could freely spread false narratives about the culprits of the war (or the civil war, as they referred to it). Both of course claimed that Ukraine was the aggressor.
7/19

During his trip, Rango also met the DPR "Prime Minister" and terrorist Alexander Zakharchenko. Zakharchenko was notorious for his human right abuses, stating in an interview that he "won’t feel sorry for the civilians or anyone else". In 2018, a bomb in a café took his life.
8/19

Since 2014, quite a few Italians had joined the war in Ukraine, where the split was about 50/50 on the Ukrainian and Russian side. Rango was the go-to-guy for those who wanted to join the Kremlin’s side. Many of the volunteers were part of the Italian far-right movement.

9/19

Rangeloni set up his own "news agency" called LNR Today-Italia, that covered news from the puppet states of Donetsk and Luhansk. It was organized information warfare targeted for the Italian-speaking audience. Soon after this, Ukrainian and Italian intelligence services...
10/19

..started to take interest in the young Italian. In 2021, he was awarded with "One of the most important honours" of the Donbas. This strategy of awarding made-up medals is commonly used by the Kremlin and even the Defense Minister Shoigu has made up hundreds of medals.

11/19

Politically, Rango seems to be all over the place. While he has strong communist sympathies, he’s also leaning towards far-right ideologies, thus confirming the famous horseshoe theory. Some have suggested that his Kolovrat tattoo might be connected to Russian Rusich group.
12/19

Rangeloni, like his fellow UK propagandist Graham Philips, interviewed a prisoner of war against their will, breaking the Geneve convention. I would suggest everyone to report the video on YouTube:



13/19

In 2023, Rango was producing propaganda around Mariupol, and accidentally showed bodies lying on the streets of the city. Naturally, this caught the interest of Ukrainian officials, who downloaded the report as potential evidence for Russian war crimes. Oops!

14/19

As a propagandist Rango lacks any creativity, and he’s just parroting the Kremlin’s classic fake narratives such as the "8 years of genocide in Donbas". He’s also calling the conflict a "civil war".

These messages are then packaged and spread for the Italian audiences.

15/19

In Italy, he sympathizes with Lega, a political party that had a strong alliance with Putin’s United Russia before the full-scale invasion.

In 2019, Buzzfeed revealed that the Kremlin attempted to funnel millions to Lega to support their political ambitions.
16/19

Rangeloni runs a Youtube and Telegram Channel, he’s active on Vkontakte & has even written a book. Rango's also a quite well-known figure in the Italian far-right circles, and spreading Russian propaganda to these marginalized groups is a common Kremlin strategy.

17/19

To conclude, Rango is a pro-Kremlin propagandist serving the typical bullshit propaganda for Italian-speaking audiences. Together with the likes of Janus Putkonen, Graham Phillips and Patrick Lancaster, he produces biased "journalism" for Russia.

18/19

Now here’s a little action point for anyone who thinks that Rango’s awful propaganda shouldn’t be funded - you can report his PayPal through this link:



19/19paypal.com/paypalme/vnran…

This soup was brewed in collaboration with @SLAVAUA2022NAFO.

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ADDENDUM: Interviewing POWs alone does not break the Geneva Convention.

Clarification here: