In today's #vatnik soup, I'll introduce an American propagandist & a Youtuber, Patrick Lancaster.He's a former sailor turned pro-Russian disinfo spreader. Ironically,his videos from the Russia-occupied areas have exposed Russian war crimes and sensitive military information.
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In June 2001 he joined the US Navy, working on the USS Kitty Hawk as a cryptologic technician. He apparently also held a top-secret clearance. After leaving the Navy, he worked as a real-estate agent until he moved to Berlin and started working as a journalist around 2011.
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Patrick calls himself a "independent, crowd-funded journalist", which means that he's mostly paid for by the Kremlin. He's usually the only English-speaking reporter in Russia-controlled territories, and often travels around with Russian troops.
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David Ferris,an American filmmaker met Lancaster in Donetsk in 2014 & later commented that "I remember [Patrick] sort of being compromised from the beginning". Cyber Front Z,a troll farm established in 2022,promotes Patrick's videos and calls for people to support his work.
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He arrived to Ukraine in 2014 to cover the Euromaidan revolution. In the same year,he converted to Orthodox Christianity,settled in the Donetsk Oblast & met a woman who'd later become his wife. Their wedding was covered by several Russian news organizations, including Zvezda.5/13
At some point Lancaster worked as a cameraman for another propagandist, Graham Phillips. By 2022, Patrick had fallen out with Graham, & Patrick described Graham as a "harmless clown who runs around in a panic, like a rabbit in headlights spouting phrases in broken English".
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Graham later retaliated, calling Lancaster an "illiterate, grifting charlatan, with a journalistic acumen and ability lower than a potted plant."
His Youtube channel gained a huge boost in subscriptions after he started reporting on the war, helping him boost his channel...
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...from mere 50 000 followers to over half a million.
Patrick is one of the "dirty dozen" of the most prominent Western propagandists that spread pro-Russian propaganda by masquerading as "independent journalists". Patrick crowdsources his work, and has over 1000 ...
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... paying subscribers on Patreon, each paying anything between 3 and 200 USD. By Jun, 2022, his Buy Me A Coffee account had collected over 77 000 USD. He also sells his footage to Kremlin-backed medias, probably gaining him a hefty extra pile of money.
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Lancaster has worked for many Kremlin-controlled state medias,including RT, Ruptly & Zvezda, while covering the war in Donbas. In 2022,his only international outlet was the InfoWars. Patrick's connected to Eric Kraus,a pro-Russian French businessman who's close to Patrushev.10/13
He's been involved in various false flag operations, which try to put the blame of "terrorist acts" and "war crimes" on the Ukrainian soldiers.
He published a staged video of a "pre-war provocation" from Donbas, in which IED had allegedly killed one of the ...
11/13
... military commanders of the made-up state of Donetsk People's Republic. Explosive weapons expert and a forensic pathologist concluded that the whole scene was staged and the bodies were actually cadavers with evident autopsy marks on their skulls.
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Research by Bellingcat also used one of Lancaster's videos to identify a Russian soldier suspected of torturing and castrating a Ukrainian POW: bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/0…
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American lawyer and politician, Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee). He’s best-known for opposing the aid to Ukraine, undermining NATO by calling the US to withdraw from the alliance, and for fighting with a bunch of braindead dogs online.
1/21
Like many of the most vile vatniks out there, “Based Mike” is a lawyer by profession. He hails from the holy land of Mormons, Utah, where he faces little political competition, allowing him to make the most outrageous claims online without risking his Senate seat.
2/21
Before becoming a senator, Mike fought to let a nuclear waste company dump Italian radioactive waste in Utah, arguing it was fine if they just diluted it. The state said no, the public revolted, and the courts told poor Mikey to sit down.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American national security policy professional and the current under secretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby (@ElbridgeColby). He’s best-known for fighting with cartoon dogs online and for halting military aid to Ukraine.
1/21
Elbridge "Cheese" Colby earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. Before entering government, he worked at top think tanks and in the intelligence community, focusing on nuclear policy and strategic planning.
2/21
Cheese quickly became a key voice for a “China First” strategy, arguing the US must prioritize military buildup in Asia over commitments in Europe or the Middle East. He sees (or saw, rather) Taiwan as the core test of US credibility.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’m going to talk about… Vatnik Soup! As some of you know, we also have a website where you can find every soup ever published. The site also has other useful resources, making it the most comprehensive resource on Russian disinformation & vatniks.
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Unfortunately, Elon has flagged the website as malware, as he might not be very happy about the soups I wrote about him - so far, they have garnered over 60 million views on X/Twitter.
The “freedom of speech” spokesperson doesn’t seem too keen on free speech, after all.
2/15
The heart & soul of the website is of course the soups page. There you can find all 360+ soups, which can be sorted chronologically, by popularity, etc. You can also search for soups by title or even in the soup text:
In today’s Wumao Soup, I’ll introduce how and where the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) online propaganda and influence operations work. Due to China’s massive population and advances in AI, CCP-aligned online content has become increasingly visible.
1/20
Like Russia’s troll farms, China has its own troll army: the “50 Cent Party” or “Wumao” refers to state-linked online commentators who are reportedly paid ¥0.50 per post to steer discussions away from criticism and amplify CCP narratives on social media.
2/20
Back in 2017, a research paper estimated that the Wumao produced almost 500 million fabricated comments annually to distract readers and shift topics. In that sense, Wumao operates very similarly to the Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” model:
In today’s Vatnik Soup and the “Degenerate Russia” series, I’ll show you the brutal reality of Russian war crimes, in particular the horrific tortures and sexual abuses of children, women and men.
Buckle up, this one is not for the faint-hearted.
1/24
For over a decade now and as part of their “firehose of falsehood” propaganda strategy, Russia has been spreading false narratives targeted at right-wing/conservative audiences, portraying russia as a bastion of Christian, traditional,family values.
In the previous “degenerate Russia” series we discussed Russia’s insanely high divorce rates, rampant domestic violence, high murder rates, thriving neo-Nazi culture, corruption of the Orthodox Church, and their massive demographic problem: