Today's Finnish #vatnik report may ruffle some feathers. It's a story about how love... sorry, business conquers all. Our main character (for once) is someone who has immense influence in the 🇫🇮 politics. His name is Paavo Lipponen, a former, two-term Prime Minister of 🇫🇮 1/7
During 2008-2022, Lipponen lobbied the infamous, Gazprom (i.e. 🇷🇺-state) owned Nord Stream gas pipe. This job was offered to him by two Germans and Putin's BFF's: ex-chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schröder, and a former Stasi agent Matthias Warnig. 2/7
Before joining their crew,Lipponen consulted 🇫🇮 current president,Tarja Halonen and PM Matti Vanhanen about the job,and they okay'd it. Month after the first meeting between Lipponen,Schröder and Warnig,🇷🇺 invaded 🇬🇪. They had already invaded Chechnya for the 2nd time before. 3/7
To Lipponen's defense, his plan to switch from nuclear (that was shunned after the Chernobyl incident) to gas was already hatched back in the '90s. It was initially planned to be coordinated with 🇸🇪, but after they refused, the focus was steered to 🇷🇺's gas fields. 4/7
During '07-'21, Cosmopolis (Lipponen's company) had made ~3,4 million euros in profit and Nord Stream AG was most definitely one of the company's biggest clients. Lipponen continued to consult for 🇷🇺-state owned Nord Stream throughout all these events:
5/7
2008 South Ossetia War
2009 Murder of Sergei Magnitsky
2014 Crimea annexation, invasion of Donbas, shoot-down of MH17
2018 Skripal murders
2022 Invasion of Ukraine
In March 2022, the contract between Lipponen-owned Cosmopolis and Nord Stream AG was dissolved. 6/7
In this 9th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss “legitimate military targets”. Russia illegally invaded Ukraine, with no declaration of war, hiding behind a “special military operation”. Yet vatniks & useful idiots pretend Russia has any legitimate or lawful targets in Ukraine.
1/8
Russia started the war in 2014 by seizing Crimea with unmarked soldiers, “little green men”. Russians have been waging an undeclared, illegal war with endless war crimes ever since, whether it’s kidnapping of Ukrainian children with genocidal intent…
… the concentration camps for Ukrainians under occupation, conscripting Ukrainians from occupied territories, or the terrorist, deliberate bombing of civilians, including their infamous “double tap” strikes.
So no, Russia does not have any “legitimate targets” in Ukraine.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Hasan Piker, a Turkish-American streamer and millionaire. He’s best known for his champagne socialism, rabid criticism of the US and Israel, support for the Soviet Union and for Chinese and Russian invasions, and for mistreating his dog.
1/20
Born in 1991, Piker grew up in a privileged and well-connected environment. His father held senior roles at big corporations and his uncle, Cenk Uygur, is the founder of The Young Turks media network. He graduated cum laude from Rutgers, a top-tier university in New Jersey.
2/20
His main activity and primary source of income consists of hours-long livestreams on Twitch where he comments on news and yells at videos. He also keeps his dog in place the whole time with a shock collar.
What you see happening here is coordinated strategic communication by the Trump cult. Elon’s baby mama and former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair explained this ecosystem in a long video. They have built platforms where people can find narratives to spread and get paid for doing so.
Even though the system technically breaks the platform's ToS, this is perfectly fine for @nikitabier and the rest of the X crew, because Elon pays their salaries and this is part of his election interference machinery.
If you wanna know how the system works, read this:
Here’s Ashley’s video, where she explains how the system works. She was immediately attacked by various MAGA actors, which suggests that what she said hit a nerve.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and politician. He’s best known for rising to power at the height of the Greek debt crisis, not solving anything but endearing himself to the left, and using his fame to promote Russian imperialism.
1/20
Born in 1961 in Athens, Varoufakis studied economics in the UK and built an academic career in Australia, the US, and Europe. His early work focused on game theory, political economy, and critiques of capitalism.
2/20
Presenting himself as the fearless, unorthodox economist willing to confront the EU’s “neoliberal” elites, he rose to prominence during Greece’s debt crisis. At its height in 2015, he was appointed finance minister under the left-wing Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras.
In this 8th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss complaints about US financing of NATO, in particular how the US allegedly pays for European defense, leading to calls for a US withdrawal from the Alliance — which would only make it easier for Putin to invade more countries.
1/7
NATO by itself costs peanuts. In fact, the core of NATO is a principle, an agreement, that ideally costs nothing. The main cost is defense spending, which the US is eagerly doing anyway: Trump has just announced a 50% increase in military spending for his “Department of War”. 2/7
To sow division and thereby weaken the Alliance, vatniks deliberately mix up different figures, such as contributions to the NATO common budget, with defense spending. And US military spending has been huge by the sheer fact that the US is the world’s largest economy.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll talk about why we’re doing this: why we think Ukraine is so important and why we believe that souping vatniks and debunking their propaganda narratives is so crucial to counter Russia’s & their allies’ wars of aggression and achieve real peace.
1/20
War is expensive, and Russia is not a rich country that could afford this: Hospitals? Roads? Plumbing? No: everything into terror and destruction.
But not only that. There is a 2nd item in the Russian state budget that remains strong no matter what:
Manufacturing support for that terror and destruction. Propaganda. Vatniks. “Innocent” travel bloggers. “Independent” journalists. “Patriotic” politicians. Russia spends hundreds of billions of rubles a year ($5 billion) on this, and that kind of money buys you A LOT of BS.