There are some well-known #vatnik's in Finland,but I'd like to introduce them to the international audiences, too. First one I'd like to talk about is a man who goes by the name Janus Putkonen (.@janus_putkonen). He is the current "Chief-Editor" of Russian propaganda piece... 1/5
... called "UMV-Lehti", which he took over after another Putinist, Juha Korhonen (.@Juha_Korh2) left this embarrassing position. "UMV-Lehti" is a Finnish propaganda piece touting Kremlin bullshit such as the biolabs and US blowing up the Nordstream gaspipes. 2/5
In 2015, Janus moved to the imaginary nation-state of Donetsk where he started "Doni News", another Kremlin propaganda outlet. His connections (and his monthly salary of about 1220 euros) to the Kremlin was found out in leaked e-mails back in 2016. 3/5
Putkonen is still spreading vast amounts of disinformation and propaganda on "UMV-Lehti" and on several channels on Telegram. He also has a program called "Fennostudio" where he rants about NATO, US and EU, usually drunk. 4/5
Before becoming a drunken agitator, Janus was working in the theater world and even took part in a Mr Finland beauty contest. Acting is not his strong suite, though, as you can see from the video below. 5/5
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In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American far-right social media personality, Nicholas J. Fuentes (@NickJFuentes). He’s best-known for his white supremacist, misogynistic and antisemitic rhetoric, and for being the poster boy for the so-called incel movement.
1/17
Like so many from the white supremacist movement, Fuentes dropped out of university after his freshman year. He studied introductory international relations, which apparently made him a geopolitics expert. Nick was introduced to the white supremacist movement at an…
2/17
..early age - he took part in the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,Virginia. In 2017, Fuentes launched his political talk show “America First”. Initially the show was aired on Trump-aligned Right Side Broadcasting Network, but it was dropped after the rally.
3/17
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss foreign malign influence operations during the 2024 US elections. As in 2016 and 2020, these recent elections were also a target of massive disinformation and hacking campaigns originating mostly from Russia and Iran.
1/17
First of all, my opinion is that these influence operations alone didn’t affect the elections so much, that they actually made a difference.
Unlike in 2016, Trump’s win over Harris was clear and these short-term campaigns didn’t really change that much this time.
2/17
Yet, many of these online campaigns attacked both Harris and Walz on various social media platforms. Especially Walz became a big target after his nomination, and many Russian efforts attempted to defame him.
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a social media personality and TV presenter, Raisa Blommestijn (@rblommestijn). She’s best-known for her far-right rhetorics, spreading conspiracy theories, and spreading anti-Ukraine and pro-Kremlin narratives on Dutch television.
1/24
Raisa studied philosophy of law at Leiden University. The faculty is best-known for one of its professors, Paul Cliteur. He’s a member of the pro-Kremlin party Forum voor Democratie (FvD), where he is one of the leading figures.Cliteur is also known for supervising the FvD…
2/24
…founder Thierry Baudet’s doctoral thesis, and can be considered a central figure in this Dutch “anti-establishment” movement. While studying at Leiden, Raise also met her best friend forever, Eva Vlaardingerbroek:
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American podcaster, Darryl Cooper (@martyrmade). He’s best-known for “Martyr Made”, a history podcast that provides a strongly revisionist and biased analysis on historical events such as the Revolution of Dignity and World War II.
1/22
Darryl became known to big audiences in 2021, when he published a Twitter thread in which he basically described a massive conspiracy against Trump during both 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. The culprits were predictable: the corporate press, intelligence agencies…
2/22
…and of course the evil Democrats. To Darryl, Russia was not working together with the Trump campaign, even though there’s clear evidence that many of his officials - including Carter Page, Rex Tillerson, Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort - interacted intimately with…
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’m going to outline the current situation in the West’s information war against Russia & its allies. Currently,the West’s counter-disinformation measures are severely underfunded,making it difficult to combat Russian influence operations effectively.
1/17
Europe today is repeating the same mistake in information warfare that it made in conventional warfare: we are not dedicating enough resources to counter it. Just as Europe was unprepared to fully support Ukraine and prepare for kinetic warfare against Russia,...
2/17
...we have been neglecting information warfare. Next year, Russia is reportedly set to spend around 3 billion USD on its information operations domestically and abroad, with allies like the CCP, Iran, and North Korea likely following suit.
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation (@Heritage). Heritage is best-known for opposing military aid to Ukraine and for their political initiative called Project 2025, a potential blueprint for a Trump presidency.
1/23
Before we begin, I want to justify this soup that focuses heavily on US domestic politics. As a strong supporter of Ukraine, I see Donald Trump as a threat to Ukraine’s existence, and the reasoning for that can be found in this previous soup:
Heritage was founded in 1973, but it took a leading role in conservative politics during the Reagan presidency, whose policies were mostly taken from the foundation’s book series called Mandate for Leadership. Project 2025 is the ninth iteration of this series.