In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce three oligarchs who are good friends with Putin. Their names are Arkady, Boris and Roman, and their surname is Rotenberg.
Arkady and Boris are brothers and Roman is Boris' son. 1/11
Their wealth originates from the same source as most oligarchs and Putin's friends-Arkady and Boris made a fortune through state-sponsored constructions projects, especially oil and gas pipelines.Arkady's wealth is estimated to be around 3 billion USD and Boris' 1,2 bil. USD.2/11
Putin and Arkady have been friends since childhood: they were kids when they joined the same sambo club,and in the early 90's they practiced judo several times a week. Later Arkady's judo club was given a state-funded "training facility" with a yacht club, worth 180 mil USD.
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After Putin became the president, he put Arkady in control of a state-owned Rosspirtprom, that controlled 30% of Russia's vodka market. Rotenbergs earned huge sums of money through inflated prices paid to them by Kremlin-controlled companies, such as Gazprom.
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In '08,Rotenbergs formed Stroygazmontazh (SGM) that made them huge profits.They won the bid for building the Kerch bridge between Crimea and Russian mainland.The brothers were named in the Panama Papers,a leak that revealed offshore businesses of rich people around the world.5/11
Arkady and Boris were sanctioned by the US in 2014 and by EU in 2016. Italy has seized 30 million € worth of real estate from Arkady, including four villas and a hotel. Roman was sanctioned by the US in 2015.
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Rotenbergs own several sports clubs, including hockey club Dynamo Moscow, FC Dynamo Moscow and PFC Sochi. Roman is the head coach of hockey team SKA St. Petersburg.
Boris and Roman also have Finnish nationality, and together with Gennady Timchenko they've had various ...
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... business ventures in Finland.
In 2013, Rotenberg family and Timchenko bought 44,98% of Hartwall Arena in Helsinki and 49% of Finnish hockey team Jokerit from Hjallis Harkimo (@hjallisharkimo), that moved to Russian hockey league KHL in 2014.
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In 2019 Jokerit was supposed to be bought back to Finnish investors with Finnish hockey legend Jari Kurri as the main owner, but the money came actually from now-sanctioned Russian oligarch Vladimir Potanin who is in good relations with both Rotenbergs and Timchenko.
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Roman has spent a lot of time in Finland partying with various celebrities, including Finnish hockey legend Teemu Selänne (@TeemuSel8nne). They tried to smoke out Harkimo from Jokerit for years, and Selänne was supposed to be his replacement.
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Of course, none of these shady deals driven by greed have been discussed afterwards, and all Finnish celebrities want people to forget their close connections with the Rotenbergs.
In this 9th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss “legitimate military targets”. Russia illegally invaded Ukraine, with no declaration of war, hiding behind a “special military operation”. Yet vatniks & useful idiots pretend Russia has any legitimate or lawful targets in Ukraine.
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Russia started the war in 2014 by seizing Crimea with unmarked soldiers, “little green men”. Russians have been waging an undeclared, illegal war with endless war crimes ever since, whether it’s kidnapping of Ukrainian children with genocidal intent…
… the concentration camps for Ukrainians under occupation, conscripting Ukrainians from occupied territories, or the terrorist, deliberate bombing of civilians, including their infamous “double tap” strikes.
So no, Russia does not have any “legitimate targets” in Ukraine.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Hasan Piker, a Turkish-American streamer and millionaire. He’s best known for his champagne socialism, rabid criticism of the US and Israel, support for the Soviet Union and for Chinese and Russian invasions, and for mistreating his dog.
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Born in 1991, Piker grew up in a privileged and well-connected environment. His father held senior roles at big corporations and his uncle, Cenk Uygur, is the founder of The Young Turks media network. He graduated cum laude from Rutgers, a top-tier university in New Jersey.
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His main activity and primary source of income consists of hours-long livestreams on Twitch where he comments on news and yells at videos. He also keeps his dog in place the whole time with a shock collar.
What you see happening here is coordinated strategic communication by the Trump cult. Elon’s baby mama and former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair explained this ecosystem in a long video. They have built platforms where people can find narratives to spread and get paid for doing so.
Even though the system technically breaks the platform's ToS, this is perfectly fine for @nikitabier and the rest of the X crew, because Elon pays their salaries and this is part of his election interference machinery.
If you wanna know how the system works, read this:
Here’s Ashley’s video, where she explains how the system works. She was immediately attacked by various MAGA actors, which suggests that what she said hit a nerve.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and politician. He’s best known for rising to power at the height of the Greek debt crisis, not solving anything but endearing himself to the left, and using his fame to promote Russian imperialism.
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Born in 1961 in Athens, Varoufakis studied economics in the UK and built an academic career in Australia, the US, and Europe. His early work focused on game theory, political economy, and critiques of capitalism.
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Presenting himself as the fearless, unorthodox economist willing to confront the EU’s “neoliberal” elites, he rose to prominence during Greece’s debt crisis. At its height in 2015, he was appointed finance minister under the left-wing Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras.
In this 8th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss complaints about US financing of NATO, in particular how the US allegedly pays for European defense, leading to calls for a US withdrawal from the Alliance — which would only make it easier for Putin to invade more countries.
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NATO by itself costs peanuts. In fact, the core of NATO is a principle, an agreement, that ideally costs nothing. The main cost is defense spending, which the US is eagerly doing anyway: Trump has just announced a 50% increase in military spending for his “Department of War”. 2/7
To sow division and thereby weaken the Alliance, vatniks deliberately mix up different figures, such as contributions to the NATO common budget, with defense spending. And US military spending has been huge by the sheer fact that the US is the world’s largest economy.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll talk about why we’re doing this: why we think Ukraine is so important and why we believe that souping vatniks and debunking their propaganda narratives is so crucial to counter Russia’s & their allies’ wars of aggression and achieve real peace.
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War is expensive, and Russia is not a rich country that could afford this: Hospitals? Roads? Plumbing? No: everything into terror and destruction.
But not only that. There is a 2nd item in the Russian state budget that remains strong no matter what:
Manufacturing support for that terror and destruction. Propaganda. Vatniks. “Innocent” travel bloggers. “Independent” journalists. “Patriotic” politicians. Russia spends hundreds of billions of rubles a year ($5 billion) on this, and that kind of money buys you A LOT of BS.