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.
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In April 2022, Putin informed that FSB had stopped a plot by "Ukrainian neo-nazis" to kill Solovyov. As a proof, FSB released a video from a flat of these evil nazis, where they found - among other things - a green wig, ...
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... a portrait of Hitler, a nazi flag and three cases of video game "The Sims". It's assumed that they were supposed to find SIM cards but misunderstood their instructions. He accused Banderites funded by the West for this "assassination attempt".
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His propaganda is mimicking the classic Kremlin rhetoric, and he likes to spout about Ukrainian nazis, satanists, Banderites, bioweapons and so on. He's also blamed NATO for waging war against Russia in Ukraine. One of Solovyov's favorite talking points is nuclear weapons...
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... and in June 2022, he declared that "I hope we'll live through this. If everything keeps progressing the way that it is, only a couple of mutants in Lake Baikal will survive; the rest will be destroyed in a massive nuclear strike."
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He's also suggested attacking Berlin, Paris, London and Brussels with long-range cruise missiles. Too bad Russia spent most of them already by bombing Ukrainian civilians.
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After the attack on the Kerch bridge, he also suggested that Russia should attack critical civilian targets such as "bridges, dams, railways, thermal power plants and other infrastructure facilities".
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Solovyov is also a big fan of Hitler. To discredit the opposition figure Navalny, he said that Hitler was a "very brave man" because he didn't get out of army service, unlike Navalny.
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In November, 2022, Russian Mediascope poll showed that Solovyov's talk show dropped out of the Top 10 programs on Russia-1. I guess there's a limit to Russian babushkas for tolerating bullshit.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll discuss the absolute state of X in January 2025. Since its acquisition by Elon Musk, this platform has rapidly transformed into his personal political tool and a breeding ground for hate speech and disinformation.
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Not everyone is following this shitshow as closely as I am, so I thought it would be good to write a summary of all the changes that have happened on this forum and outside of it. These changes have drastically changed how the platform operates and who gets “a voice” here.
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Elon’s team has been tweaking the algorithm many times after the takeover. One of these tweaks happened already around Nov 2022, when the platform heavily suppressed the visibility of pro-Ukraine accounts. This change was then noticed & reported by many pro-Ukraine accounts.
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In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Venezuelan bus driver, politician & dictator, Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro). He’s best-known for ruining Venezuela, turning it into a dictatorship, and for collaborating with other authoritarian regimes like Russia, Iran & Belarus.
1/22
His exact birthplace has been questioned, but most sources agree that Mr. Maduro was born in Caracas, Venezuela. Maduro was raised in a Catholic family, but at some point became a follower of Indian Hindu guru Sathya Sai Baba and even visited the guru in India back in 2005.
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Nicolás’ introduction to leftist politics happened during the 80s, when he acted as an unofficial trade unionist and as bodyguard for José Vicente Rangel, who later worked as a foreign minister under Hugo Chávez. He also visited Havana, Cuba, where he “studied communism”,…
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an Estonian politician and propagandist, Aivo Peterson. He’s best-known for travelling to Donbas and Mariupol to produce pro-Kremlin propaganda, and for trying to create a pro-Russia separatist movement in Estonia.
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Peterson is what I call a “decoy vatnik” - someone who’s so overtly pro-Kremlin that their activities draw a lot of attention (think Johan Bäckman in Finland), and the Putin bootlickers who work through business and politics can operate in peace.
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Aivo hails from Ida-Viru, a region populated mostly by Russians. His father was Russian — his birthname was Krylov, but he later took his mother’s surname Peterson. Before becoming a full-time Kremlin propagandist, he worked as a border guard, masseur & real estate agent.