In today's #vatnik soup, I'll introduce a man who loves both genocide and corruption: the "Butcher of Syria", Sergey Surovikin.
Surovikin is the current commander of all Russian forces in the war in Ukraine.
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Sergey is a military man through and through - he's a spetsnaz and already fought in the Soviet-Afghan War in the 80's. During the Chechen War, he declared that he'd "destroy three Chechen fighters for every Russian soldier killed."
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He showed his yearning for killing civilians already in '91, when he ordered his battalion to kill three civilian demonstrators during the coup d'état attempt in Moscow. He was of course pardoned by Yeltsin for this crime.
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In 2004, one Viktor Chibizov accused Surovikin for beating him up. A month later, Chibizov shot himself in front of Surovikin.
In March, 2017 he got his first big boy job as he was introduced as the Commander of the Russian armed forces in Syria.
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Surovikin managed to turn the tide of the war for the dictator al-Assad by killing civilians ruthlessly. Human Right Watch reported that Sergey's actions in Idlib "showed callous disregard for the lives of the roughly 3 million civilians in the area".
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According to White Helmets, an NGO helping civilians in war-ridden Syria, Russia used a barbaric strategy in Idlib and other areas: while bombing civilian targets, Surovikin's forces applied so called "double-tap strikes": After hitting civilian targets once, they did ...
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...another round to kill the fleeing civilians and the humanitarian workers, such as the White Helmets, helping them.
He also bombed Aleppo to ruins, following the Russian tradition of destroying everything. For these heroic deeds, he gained the nickname, "Butcher of Syria".
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Massacring civilians is hard work, and Sergey needs some kind of payment for this. Maria Pevchikh's team exposed Surovikin's shady phosphate businesses in Syria for which he got 1.4 million USD:
In October, 2022 it was announced that Surovikin has been promoted as the commander of the Russian forces in Ukraine. After this, the attacks on civilian targets and infrastructure has ramped up drastically - it has actually become a Russian war tactic again.
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Several Kremlin sources have stated that he is in
favor of these genocidal atrocities: meduza.io/en/feature/202…
In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce a 🇷🇺 TV star and a propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov. He has his own TV show called "Evening with Vladimir Solovyov".
Vladimir is first and foremost a Kremlin-mouthpiece and a master propagandist, who speaks mostly to the 🇷🇺 people.
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His primary mission is to get people riled up about the war and the "brutal Ukrainians". For this, he uses a powerful strategy: he's one of the few people who is allowed to criticize the 🇷🇺 leadership (except Czar Putin, who's always right) and their decisions on the war.
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On 23 Feb, 2022, Italian authorities seized Solovyov's 8 million USD villa on Lake Como. In April, 2022, activists painted the villa's swimming pool with red paint. The villa was also set on fire and was heavily damaged as a result.
In today's #vatnik soup I'll discuss different content types used for disinformation and propaganda. Narratives can be made much more powerful when the stories are supported by several types of media. A simple example of this is a news story that is complemented with images.
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Some medias are extremely simple to produce, whereas others require extensive skill set ranging from video editing to highly sophisticated AI algorithms.
I'll introduce them briefly, starting with the simplest one.
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1) Short-form text: This could be a FB/IG post or a tweet without any additional context. People often use excerpts from speeches that are taken out of context or just tell outright lies.
Fake tweets can also be factored with various online generators.
In today's #vatnik soup, I'll introduce an oligarch and a propagandist Konstantin Malofeyev (or Malofeev). He's a prominent figure in both organizing and funding illegal paramilitary groups and fringe political groups.
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Malofeyev is best known for his russian TV network, Tsargrad TV. This network started back in 2015 and in the same year Alexander Dugin was named as the channel's chief editor. Konstantin was sitting beside Dugin at Darya Dugina's funeral.
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In 2016 Dugin was replaced at Tsargrad by another propagandist, Elena Sharoykina.
Tsargrad TV was set up with a help from Fox News veteran Jack Hanick. Hanick was launching Fox News already back in 1996, and in 2014 he started helping Malofeyev with Tsargrad.
In today's #vatnik soup I'll discuss Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) and why he was a bad choice for disseminating the Twitter Files.
First, see the ugly ass chart that I made to see the connections between the pro-Russian actors and Taibbi. I'm truly sorry for how it looks.
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As you can see from the chart, Taibbi, once a prominent journalist and a former contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine is well-connected to some of the biggest Russia/Syria-apologists and grifters alive.
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I've written about Aaron Maté before, and Neil Abrams (@neil_abrams) has done a comprehensive list of debunkings he has done on Maté:
In today's #vatnik soup I'll explain why Elon Musk's (@elonmusk) "balancing act" of purging just one side will increase the spread of fake news and disinformation.
First of all I'd like to say that biased, systematic blacklisting of content that Twitter conducted was WRONG.
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Censorship is almost always bad and there are much better ways to fight dis- and misinformation (labels, semi-objective, external fact-checkers, etc.).
But based on recent events, it seems that Musk is just swinging this same system to the opposite direction.
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In his Nov 18, 2022 tweet he said that "Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized", yet there are no definitions or clear rules what is considered hate speech.
Elon also promised to reinstate accounts that were previously suspended.
In today's #vatnik soup, I'll continue discussing about info ops, disinfo & propaganda. Today's focus will be on troll farms and "useful idiots".
As usual, I'll focus on Russia and its activities because of its topicality and the previous research available.
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Troll farms are government-coordinated groups or private companies consisting of internet trolls that attempt to affect the public opinion and behavior inside a society or a community.
They're main job is to augment propaganda, and harass and ridicule the opposition.
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In 2017 think tank Freedom House's report stated that at least 30 countries have their own paid keyboard armies to spread propaganda and disrupt the flow of factual information. Same study suggested that elections in 18 countries were influenced by these troll farms.