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.

1/12
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.

2/12
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.

3/12
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".

5/12
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...
6/12
... 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."

7/12
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.

8/12
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".

9/12
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.

10/12
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.

ukranews.com/en/news/896154…

11/12
As a Russian tradionist, Solovyov has been married three times. He's been sanctioned by the EU after the 2022 invasion in Ukraine started.

For clips from Solovyov's program, you should check Julia Davis' coverage on Twitter and Youtube: @JuliaDavisNews

12/12

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Dec 17
In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce a mercenary, military blogger and a mass murderer, Igor Girkin (AKA Strelkov). Girkin used to be a FSB officer and he's been involved in many Russian wars from Chechenya and Transnistria to 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War.

1/13 Image
Girkin is best known for his involvement in Russia's annexation activities. In April, 2014, after Russian troops captured Sloviansk, Igor was "promoted" to the made-up position of "Supreme Commander of the Donetsk People's Republic".

2/13 Image
At this time he was using the name "Strelkov" ("Rifleman"). Soon he started ruling the puppet state DPR with iron fist, executing people on made up charges and forcing people of DPR, including women, to fight against the Ukrainians.

3/13 Image
Read 14 tweets
Dec 15
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.

1/10
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."

2/10
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.

3/10
Read 10 tweets
Dec 13
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.
1/13
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.

2/13
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.

3/13
Read 13 tweets
Dec 12
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.

1/15
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.

2/15
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.

3/15
Read 15 tweets
Dec 11
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.

1/7
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.

2/7
I've written about Aaron Maté before, and Neil Abrams (@neil_abrams) has done a comprehensive list of debunkings he has done on Maté:


He likes to smear NGO's like the White Helmets who revealed war crimes in Syria ...

3/7
Read 7 tweets
Dec 10
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.

1/14
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.

2/14
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.

3/14
Read 15 tweets

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