Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Dec 25, 2022 10 tweets 3 min read Read on X
In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce a 🇷🇺 spokeswoman and a birthday girl, Maria Zakharova. She's been working at this position since 2015.

Maria married Andrei Makarov in a glamorous ceremony in New York in 2005. This soup consists of pictures from this lavish event.

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Maria is probably the most quoted Russian diplomat. She likes to bash the West in her speeches, and often brings up (mostly made up) contradictions from the rhetoric of the US spokespeople.

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Zakharova has made some pretty weird statements throughout the years. For example, she's said that 1995 Srebrenica genocide was staged. She's said the same thing about Bucha and Izyum.

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In 2016 she made an anti-Semitic joke on Russian TV, suggesting that Donald Trump won the US elections with the help of the Jews. She made her statement in a stereotypical Russian Jewish accent.

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Incidentally, the only occasion when Maria has apologized was when she tweeted about Serbian president Vucic visiting Trump and compared the scene with the famous scene from the movie "Basic Instinct".

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Actually, both Putin and Lavrov apologized for the incident, too. So, no apologies for genocide denial, but only for movie references - gotcha.

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On 16 Feb 2022, she openly ridiculed Western intel and media predictions that Russia would attack Ukraine, saying that she should be sent the schedule so that "she can plan her vacations accordingly."

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After Russia invaded Ukraine, she said that "Russia didn't start a war, it is ending it", and after that she spouted the typical "genocide of Russian population in Donbas" bullshit.

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She was sanctioned by the EU on 23 Feb, 2022 as "a central figure of the government propaganda". Her assets were frozen and she was put on no fly list. On March 8, 2022, she was sanctioned by Australia and on March 18, 2022 by Japan.

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She's still got it.

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Jun 20
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.

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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,…

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…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.

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Read 23 tweets
Jun 16
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.

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Read 11 tweets
Jun 8
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.

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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.

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Read 17 tweets
Jun 2
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,…

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…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.

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Read 21 tweets
May 28
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.

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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.”

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Read 21 tweets
May 22
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.

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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.

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Read 21 tweets

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