In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce a British freelance journalist, agitator and propagandist, Graham Phillips. In his articles and videos he favors Russia heavily, even though he calls himself an "independent journalist".
1/13
Graham moved to Ukraine in 2010 and started working as an English teacher. He also started writing a blog, Brit in Ukraine, with articles on football, politics, history, and prostitution. The last topic was apparently his favorite, as he wrote a lot about prostitutes, ...
2/13
... students moonlighting as escorts and foreign bride-hunters. He wrote about his first encounter with a prostitute in Amsterdam in a following manner: "A new high had replaced the drugs, and I exhaled 'I love prostitutes' into an appreciative Amsterdam night."
3/13
He also interviewed prostitutes on a floating Brothel on the Dnieper River and concluded that "Ukraine speaks to the wildness in me".
After these sexual escapades he focused on his writings, but one of his books was withdrawn due to a threat of legal action & another one...
4/13
... - incidentally about an American searching for an Ukrainian bride - was never finished. He found himself unemployed, and his relationship ended because she was more interested in Euromaidan than in him.
5/13
His critical reporting of the mass protests caught the eye of RT producers, who asked him to comment the situation via Skype for propaganda purposes.He made good money as the Kremlin-sponsored propagandists, and for a while he was the only RT reporter working in Ukraine.
6/13
It seems that his experiences in Ukraine made him bitter, & he soon started talking about "Kiev [sic] junta" & "Ukrainian fascists". He started freelancing for RT, "reporting" around 🇺🇦. He's been caught by the AFU and deported several times, and each time he has returned.
7/13
In Sep, 2016 he taunted a disabled Ukrainian POW who had lost both of his arms and sight in a mine blast. Earlier that year he was disrupting the Remembrance Day of the Latvian Legionnaires events and was deported to Russia.
8/13
When looking at Graham's publicity stunts, there are MANY. In Aug, 2016, he entered the investigative journalism organization Correctiv's office and demanded an interview with MH17 investigator Marcus Bensmann.
9/13
In Jan, 2017 he was thrown out of the UK Parliament loudly condemning UK's support for Ukraine. He's been creating and spreading pro-Russian disinformation in Donbas area. In 2018, he disrupted a press conference by Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins, calling him a "NATO agent".
10/13
After 🇷🇺's invasion began, Phillips went immediately back to Ukraine. In Apr '22 he interviewed Aiden Aislin,a British-Ukrainian soldier captured by the Russians.Publishing interviews of POWs is against the Geneve Conventions & he may face a war crime prosecution for this.
11/13
For his "great work", Border Service (a branch of FSB) awarded him with a "Border Brotherhood" medal. He's also been awarded several medals by the Luhansk and Donetsk oblast separatists. In Nov, 2020, he was awarded the "War Correspondent" medal in Moscow.
12/13
In Jul, 2022, Phillips became the first British-born citizen to be sanctioned, when UK placed him under sanctions and froze his assets.
Today he has a tiny following on Rumble and Odysee, platforms that nobody gives a shit about.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, made together with chef invité @Martinlaineolen, we discuss the extensive links between pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and Russian officials and intelligence operatives, and how Western politicians reinforced these links.
1/23
While MAGA influencers remain silent on Epstein, pro-Kremlin propagandists and bot farms have expectedly launched an anti-Ukraine online operation, spreading fake narratives that connect Ukraine, its politicians, and the late sex trafficker.
2/23
But the emails paint a very different picture: in reality, Epstein had very close connections with Russian officials and intelligence operatives, and even built bridges and arranged meetings between MAGA figures and the Kremlin.
In this 5th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss something that sounds great in theory, but was completely turned upside-down by the tankie kind of vatnik: anti-imperialism. More consistent anti-imperialists call this the “anti-imperialism of idiots”. 1/5
“Anti-imperialism” was popularized by Lenin, who saw imperialism as the ultimate stage of capitalism. Ironically, the largest empire is now… Putin’s Russia, proud heir to both Lenin’s Soviet Union and to the Tsarist Empire. 2/5
Indeed, Russia is an empire that is still ruled by a de facto all-powerful Tsar, that still proudly flies its imperial flag, that still dreams of expanding its already huge territory through brutal conquest and colonization. 3/5
In this 4th Debunk of the Day, we’ll refute an absolute classic of vatnik BS, the crown jewel of peak dishonesty: whataboutism.
Now, not everything that looks like whataboutism is wrong. Seeking consistency or comparing actions or responses is normal. 1/5
But when someone pulls some completely unrelated event, that happened to completely different people, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, you know what you’re dealing with: a crass denial of the problem at hand, a bad-faith attempt to derail the topic. 2/5
Logic or chronology plays no role here, nor your opinion on these other topics. You could be the staunchest critic or supporter of these other actions thrown into the discussion, it doesn’t matter. It is irrelevant whether these other things are true or not, or bad or not. 3/5
In this 3rd Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about… “ending” the war by surrendering or ceding territory.
Nearing four years of the 2-day “special military operation”, Russia is desperate to obtain through other means what they failed to conquer on the battlefield. 1/5
An endless army of vatniks therefore tries to demoralize both Ukrainians and supporters.
They sound noble: “anti-war” or concerned about the fate of Ukraine’s civilians, soldiers and cities. They claim that if we just stop fighting or helping, this horror would magically end. 2/5
What they never mention is… WHO started the war, WHO murders Ukrainians, WHO destroys Ukrainian cities: the same monsters they suggest Ukrainians be at the mercy of. Surrendering wouldn’t end the atrocities of the occupation, it would enable them. Surrendering wouldn’t even…3/5
In today’s Debunk of the Day (2), we’ll look at… nuclear blackmail. Vatniks love using Russia’s nuclear threats as a reason for surrendering or for not lifting a finger to help Ukraine: “see, they have nukes, we have to give them whatever they want”.
The argument is absurd: 1/5
Nuclear deterrence has been a reality for decades. Both the US and Russia have lost wars without resorting to nukes. We are not submitting to the whims of Pakistan or North Korea either. For vatniks, it’s just an insidious way of siding with Putin. 2/5
We can’t just give in to the Kremlin’s nuclear blackmail, to the threats their officials and propagandists make five times a day to scare us into letting them have something they know perfectly well is not theirs, with no limit to their appetite. 3/5 vatniksoup.com/en/nuclear-thr…
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce a Ukrainian “scholar” and social media activist, Marta Havryshko (@HavryshkoMarta). She’s best known for spreading anti-Ukraine and pro-Kremlin narratives online, along with a habit of spotting neo-Nazis everywhere in Ukraine.
1/20
Marta hails from Ukraine, where she studied history at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. She received her PhD in history in 2010. Her academic work focused on gender-based violence and wartime atrocities, including publications on sexual crimes in occupied Ukraine.
2/20
She is currently working as a visiting Assistant Professor at the Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Clark University in the US. According to the center’s website, Marta teaches courses on antisemitism, racism, and gender-based violence in armed conflicts.