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, ...
4/12
... 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 REBREW, I’ll re-introduce a Latvian politician and former MEP, Tatjana Ždanoka. She’s best-known for her history in the Communist Party of Latvia, for her pro-Russian politics in the country, and her connections to Russian intelligence.
1/22
Based on Ždanoka’s speeches and social media posts, she has a deep hatred towards the people of Latvia. The reason for this can only be speculated, but part of it could be due to her paternal family being killed by the Latvian Auxiliary Police,…
2/22
…a paramilitary force supported by the Nazis, during the early 1940s. Ždanoka became politically active in the late 80s. She was one of the leaders of Interfront, a political party that supported Latvia remaining part of the USSR.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce the main themes of Russian disinformation on TikTok. Each day, there are thousands of new videos promoting pro-Kremlin narratives and propaganda.
It’s worth noting that Russians can only access European TikTok via VPN.
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There is currently a massive TikTok campaign aimed at promoting a positive image of Russia. The videos typically feature relatively attractive young women and focus on themes of nationalism and cultural heritage.
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Ironically, many of these videos from Moscow or St. Petersburg are deceptively edited to portray Ukraine in a false light — claiming there is no war and that international aid is being funneled to corrupt elites.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll talk about Finland and how pro-Kremlin propagandists have become more active in the Finnish political space since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For the first time since 2022, they’ve gained some political power in Finland.
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Russia’s political strategy in countries with Russian-speaking minorities (such as Finland and the Baltics) is typically quite similar: it seeks to rally these minorities around issues like language and minority rights, and then frames the situation as oppression.
2/16
At the same time, Russian speakers are extremely wary and skeptical of local media, and instead tend to follow Russian domestic outlets like Russia-1 and NTV, thereby reinforcing an almost impenetrable information bubble.
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.
1/20
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,…
2/20
…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.
2/20
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.
2/20
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.