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Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
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Dec 18 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
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.
3/11
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.

4/11
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.

6/11
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 ...

7/11
... 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.

8/11
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.

9/11
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.

10/11
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.

11/11
My soup on Gennady Timchenko:

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Dec 20
In today's #vatnik soup I'll continue talking about troll farms and social media manipulation, extending the topic to other social media platforms, too.

Our social media space is constantly manipulated by paid actors whose goal is to control the online narratives.

1/10 Image
Most (if not all)social media platforms are saying they are effectively fighting against fake accounts & bots. This is not true:fake account industry is blooming & it's also a very lucrative business.Changes made on these platforms have not changed the manipulation industry. 2/10 Image
From the big social media sites, (pre-Musk) Twitter is actually the best at rooting out the fake accounts, with VKontakte coming close 2nd.Even if you'd think otherwise based on the news, FB, IG, TikTok and YouTube are quite terrible at this and have a massive troll problem. 3/10 ImageImageImage
Read 10 tweets
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Dec 19
In today's #vatnik soup, I'll introduce the despote that rules over Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. He is the son of Akhmad Kadyrov, who switched sides during the Second Chechen War, offering his services to Putin to become the President of the Chechen Republic.

1/14 Image
For this, Akhmad was assassinated by Chechen Islamists in 2004, and Ramzan took his position in 2007. Ramzan rules the Chechens through despotism and repression of human rights, and Human Rights Watch has accused him of crimes against humanity.

2/14 Image
He's been connected to multiple kidnappings, assassinations and torture of human rights activists, critics and their relatives both in Russia and abroad. He's been connected to murders of a journalist Anna Politkovskaya and Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov.

3/14 ImageImage
Read 14 tweets
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
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
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
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
Read 14 tweets
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Dec 16
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
Read 12 tweets
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
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
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
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

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