In today's #vatnik soup, I'll start an introduction about the Russian information operations (an activity that tries to affect the public opinion and behavior of a society), disinformation and propaganda.
This topic is a broad issue and I'll do it over several threads.
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The Russian model of disinformation dates back to KGB days. KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov explained already in 1985 the idea of "ideological subversion" or "active measures" as an overt and open operation of manipulation of public opinion.
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Bezmenov said that Russian "active measures" can be divided into 4 stages: 1) demoralization, 2) destabilization, 3) crisis, and finally 4) normalization.
I can highly recommend watching this interview of Bezmenov as it's still very topical:
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The general model for info ops is as follows: 1) sowing fears, 2) fueling mistrust, and finally 3) offering salvation.
Let's use COVID-19 as an example: at the beginning of the pandemic, Russian disinformation was outlining that COVID is highly lethal ...
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... and that you can't trust the government on anything they say. This same idea was then shifted to vaccinations. This disinfo campaign is still going strong: web.archive.org/web/2022091413…
Finally, Russia offered a "salvation" with their own Sputnik V vaccine.
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In this regard their propaganda was a total failure: it backfired, spread inside Russia and large portion of Russians skipped the vaccines altogether. In Lithuania, most of the COVID deaths were among the Russian speaking population who became victims of Russian disinfo.
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Another example of a successful info op in the West were the 2016 US elections. Russia's "Project Lakhta" interfered with democratic election process with huge amount of disinformation, spreading mistrust and uncertainty in the society: justice.gov/opa/pr/russian…
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Troll farm IRA founder Yevgeny Prigozhin denied their involvement and even sued people who suggested this,but in Nov,'22 he admitted that "We have interfered (in U.S. elections), we are interfering and we will continue to interfere. [..] in our own way, as we know how to do."8/10
Trump was the perfect candidate for Russia: his businesses were in Russia & he was conducting the Russian disinformation model, "firehose of falsehood" perfectly: Based on Washington Post's research, Trump made over 30 000 false or misleading statements during his presidency.9/10
The legacy of his pro-Putin politics can still be seen in the US with politicians like QAnon & Pizzagate advocate Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) and agitator and a laughingstock Jackson Hinkle (@jacksonhinklle).
Stay tuned for part two!
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In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll discuss the Ukrainian SBU’s “Spiderweb” operation and the main disinformation narrative vatniks have been spreading during the afterfall. While domestic Russian media stays silent, the vatniks and Russian milbloggers have been extremely loud.
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This operation was probably the most impactful strike since the drowning of the Moskva, massively reducing Russia’s capability to bomb Ukrainian cities (or anyone else’s). It involved smuggling 117 FPV drones hidden in trucks into Russia. Once near airbases,…
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…the roofs opened remotely, launching drones in synchronized waves to strike targets up to 4,000 km away. The mission took 18 months to plan. The unsuspecting Russian truck drivers who transported them had no idea they were delivering weapons deep behind their own lines.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Russian movie director, propagandist, and former priest: Ivan Okhlobystin. He’s best known for his strong support for the war on Ukraine and for his radical views, which are often used as a testbed for the domestic Russian audience.
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Ivan was born in 1966 from a short-lived marriage between a 62-year-old chief physician and a 19-year-old engineering student. She later remarried, and the family moved from Kaluga province to Moscow. Ivan kept the surname Okhlobystin from his biological father.
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After moving to Moscow, Ivan began studying at VGIK film school. He soon became a playwright for theatre productions and also wrote for Stolitsa magazine, which he later left because, as he put it, “it had become a brothel.”
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Ukrainian-born former State Duma deputy, Vladimir Medinsky. He is best known as one of the ideologues of the “Russkiy Mir”, for his close ties to Vladimir Putin, and for leading the “peace talks” in Turkey in 2022 and 2025.
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During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Medinsky interned as a correspondent on the international desk of the TASS news agency, learning the ways of propaganda at an early age. Some time later, he earned two PhDs – one in political science and the other in history.
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As is tradition in Russia, Medinsky’s academic work was largely pseudo-scientific and plagiarized. Dissernet found that 87 of 120 pages in his dissertation were copied from his supervisor’s thesis. His second dissertation was also heavily plagiarized.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American social media influencer, Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson). He’s best known for his plagiarism while working as a clickbait “journalist”, and for being paid by the Kremlin to spread anti-Ukraine and anti-Democratic narratives.
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Benny graduated from the University of Iowa in 2009 with a degree in developmental psychology. His former high school buddy described him as the “smartest, most articulate kid in school,” and was disappointed to see him turn into a “cheating, low standard hack.”
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After graduating, Benny dived directly into the world of outrage media. Benny’s first job was writing op-eds for far-right website Breitbart, from where he moved on to TheBlaze, a conservative media owned by Glenn Beck, and a spring board for many conservative influencers.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Cypriot politician and social media personality, Fidias Panayiotou (@Fidias0). He’s best known for his clickbait YouTube stunts and for voting against aid to Ukraine and the return of abducted Ukrainian children from Russia.
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Fidias hails from Meniko, Cyprus. In 2019, he began posting videos on YouTube. After a slow start, he found his niche with clickbaity, MrBeast-style content featuring silly stunts, catchy titles and scripted dialogue. Today, Fidias has 2,7 million subscribers on YouTube.
2/20
Fidias’s channel started with trend-riding, but he found his niche in traveling without money — aka freeloading. In one video, he fare-dodged on the Bengaluru Metro. The train authority responded by saying they would file a criminal case against him.
In today’s May 9th Vatnik Soup, we discuss the ambiguous relationship of the Kremlin with Nazism and explain why so many vatniks can be outright Nazis, and promote or excuse them while at the same time being so hysterical about alleged “Nazis in Ukraine”.
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Of course, Kremlin propaganda employs the Firehose of Falsehood and often lacks any consistent ideology other than spreading chaos and seeking power, so such contradictions can be commonplace. However in this case there is a certain cynical consistency there.
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To understand modern Russia, we need to go back a hundred years to the beginnings of Soviet Russia/Soviet Union — a genocidal terror regime under dictators Lenin and Stalin, whose totalitarian and imperialist legacy Putin’s Russia fully embraces.