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, I’ll introduce a former Ukrainian politician and president, Viktor Yanukovych. He’s best known for selling his country to Russia, trying to turn it into an authoritarian state, and eventually fleeing to Moscow once his plan failed.
1/22
Now that Russia and the US are planning to replace president Zelenskyy with someone who’s more willing to sell the country to them (most probably Viktor Medvedchuk or one of his cronies), it’s a good time to remind people how Yanukovych and Putin almost took over Ukraine.
2/22
Yanukovych’s first attempt at power came in 2004, when he “won” the Ukrainian presidential election through massive fraud. The rigged vote sparked the Orange Revolution, a wave of protests that forced the election to be re-run. His opponent, pro-Western candidate…
Russia uses Tucker Carlson as a vessel for its propaganda. Many of the most popular narratives originate from his misinformation-filled show, which is funded by Elon. Some of these lies include:
- Bioweapons labs
- Gonzalo Lira being a "journalist"
-Zelenskyy being a dictator
- The banning of the Russian Orthodox Church
- The banning of Viktor Medvedchuk's pro-Kremlin propaganda network
- Putin's interview and revisionism
- That ridiculous St. Petersburg propaganda piece
Bob Amsterdam, who Tucker has interviewed a few times is paid by a Russian oligarch, Vadym Novynskyi.
We now know from the Tenet Media case that Russian state media wants to spread Tucker's verbal diarrhea everywhere. These fake stories have finally made their way to Trump.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll take out my crystal ball and predict what the alliance between the US and Russia could mean for Ukraine, Europe and geopolitics in general. These recent changes could be a real risk for the whole of Europe, and need to be addressed quickly.
1/23
Some of us have been reporting on Trump’s pro-Kremlin tendencies for years now. His Moscow connections go back all the way to the late 80s, and the 2016 US presidential elections raised a lot of red flags about the close connections of his associates to Russian operatives.
2/23
The recent Rubio-Lavrov meeting in Saudi Arabia was an eye-opening event for many who were still optimistic about Trump and Ukraine – the outcome was that Putin got absolutely everything he’s ever wanted from the war, and at the same time it seems that the US got nothing.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce how the Elon’s Election Interference Machine™ (EIM) works. Since Musk & his broligarch allies won the presidency for Trump, they’ve now harnessed the machine to interfere in European elections, including the ones in Germany & Romania.
1/23
At this point it is clear why Elon bought Twitter – his grand plan was to promote “free speech absolutism” (which, of course, doesn’t even exist on the platform) and tweak the algorithms so that they allow him to promote political parties that align with his worldview.
2/23
First, let’s talk about “freedom of speech” that the Trump administration, especially Musk and VP Vance constantly rant about. Incidentally, they only blame the EU for “limiting free speech”, and there’s a good reason for this: they are driving for political change.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce the Russian disinformation network “Doppelgänger”. Doppelgänger is an influence and hybrid operation spreading Kremlin propaganda via AI-generated fake news websites and social media sites, especially X.
1/20
Doppelgänger is a massive influence operation that was initially exposed back in 2022. Their modus operandi is to create near-identical copies of large, legitimate Western news outlets to spread anti-Ukraine, anti-Western and anti-NATO narratives.
2/20
The operation, overseen by Putin’s top aide Sergei Kiriyenko (who’s reportedly communicated with Elon), uses Russian firms like Social Design Agency (SDA) to create fake news sites that mimick legitimate media like The Washington Post, The Guardian, Bild and Fox News.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’m going to talk about Europe’s information defense against foreign influence operations & disinformation.
The EU can’t rely anymore on America’s help in geopolitical struggles, and it’s time we created a united front against information threats.
1/24
Recent news coming from the US should be the final wake-up call for European decision-makers. Recently, Trump’s rhetoric has been openly pro-Kremlin and both anti-Ukraine & anti-EU, and at the same time the US is dismantling all institutions fighting against disinformation.
2/24
So far, the Trump administration has put staffers working on disinformation as well as a team of election security advisers at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on administrative leave.