In today's #vatnik soup,I'll discuss a man who's small in every sense. He's the ex-president of Russia,Dmitry Medvedev.He's currently working as the deputy chairman of the Security Council, but he's best known for his aggressive social media behavior and sucking up to Putin. 1/12
During his presidency, Dmitry was doing a lot of changes and signaled about a possibility of a more liberal Russia.
Naturally, this was mostly a ruse and his presidency was only granted to him by Putin so that he could be re-elected later on.
2/12
For the 2008 presidential election, everyone expected Putin to support a silovik candidate such as Viktor Zubkov or Sergei Ivanov, but to everyone's surprise he introduced Medvedev as his preferred successor. Putin's endorsement caused Dmitry's popularity to skyrocket.
3/12
Putin's endorsement could've been due to two reasons: 1) He was just as short as Putin,and 2) he was a weak candidate who wouldn't try to do a power grab later when Putin signed up for re-election.
After he became the president, Medvedev appointed Putin as the Prime Minister.4/12
Professor Daniel Treisman has argued that Putin was ready to withdraw to the background, but the 2008 financial crisis and the South Ossetia War changed his mind. Dmitry called the latter absurdly an "Operation to force Georgia into peace".
5/12
In 2008 he established the Anti-Corruption Council. Dmitry was an expert on corruption: later in 2016-2017 Navalny exposed that Medvedev controlled vast amounts of villas, palaces, wineries, yachts, etc. The total value of his belongings was estimated to be 1,2 billion USD.
6/12
His 80-hectare dacha consisted of several houses, a ski run, a swimming pool with a waterfall, three helipads, communication towers and a house for ducks. These ducks became the target of public ridicule and a symbol of protests in Russia.
After Navalny's revelation, there were a lot of protests around Russia and in 2017 Levada poll 45% of Russians supported his resignation. He worked as the Russian PM until 2020, but after the relations with Putin became sour, Vlad sacked Medvedev and his entire Cabinet.
8/12
Like all good Russians, Medvedev allegedly loves alcohol. There were wild speculations about his sobriety at G-8 meeting back in 2009.These days Medvedev is doing angry rants on social media, calling for genocide in Ukraine on almost daily basis, threatening the West with ...9/12
... both nuclear and traditional weapons, blaming NATO for proxy war - you know,the usual stuff.
One time he rambled about Ukraine:"I am often asked why my Telegram posts are so harsh. The answer is I hate them. They are bastards and geeks. They want death for us, Russia...10/12
... And as long as I’m alive, I will do everything to make them disappear." Maybe stay off the vodka for a while,Dimi?
In July, 2022, he shared a map showing Ukraine divided between Russia, Poland, Romania & Hungary.Based on him,this prediction was done by "Western experts"
11/12
On 26 Dec, 2022, he made a wild prediction for the near future. In his prediction, the US was torn by a civil war and Elon Musk was elected the president. Elon called Dmitry's prophecy "epic".
12/12
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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.
1/20
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.
2/20
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.
1/7
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.
1/20
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.
In this second (and possibly last) Basiji Soup, we’ll explore how the Islamic Republic of Iran has prepared for a conflict with the US and Israel. We won’t cover the military aspects, but another kind of war — information warfare.
1/20
In the 1st Basiji Soup, we souped the Islamic Republic, its disinformation operations, its hypocrisy, its support of terrorism including Russia’s, its (one-sided?) relationship with Putin, and the mass protests against it that started two months ago:
The Internet blackout has been crucial in allowing the regime to cover up its massacre of the protesters and especially the scope of it, making it difficult to assess the number of victims. They went to great lengths to jam Starlink, after having made its use illegal.
In this 7th Debunk of the Day, we’ll expose the “Chickenhawk” fallacy. The chickenhawk accusation or the “go to the front!” imperative is a dishonest attempt to silence anyone supporting Ukraine by pushing them to go fight. A barely hidden death wish, as it’s always uttered… 1/5
…with zero regard for who you are or what your personal circumstances might be — you could already be there, on your way there, a veteran, or unable to fight. More broadly, not everyone can or should be a soldier, just as not everyone can or should be a policeman or a nurse. 2/5
Yet a society still needs those things to be done, and the fact that not everyone can go to medical school or fight crime does not mean that we have to surrender to invaders and criminals, nor that we cannot all have an opinion on healthcare. 3/5
In this 6th Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about a complex and controversial topic: conscription. It is used by vatniks to attack Ukraine for drafting men to fight, while conveniently ignoring the alternative, including the horrors of conscription into the Russian army. 1/8
Military obligations are a reality in many countries, from the most peaceful democracies to the most tyrannical dictatorships — unless you have “bone spurs”. Some argue it is a necessity for defense against invading armies, especially for small countries. 2/8
Others point out that it goes against individual rights or that a professional army is better. And Zelenskyy might agree: he did in fact end conscription. But then a full-scale invasion happened: exactly why many nations, including the US, still keep some form of draft. 3/8