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 ...
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... 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 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
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll introduce the International Olympic Committee (IOC) @Olympics . It’s mostly known for organizing sporting events, and for being supposed to foster the Olympic ideal while actually submitting to dictators.
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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was founded in 1894 in Paris by Pierre de Coubertin with a noble goal: promote peace through sports. Politics out, sportsmanship in: sounds great in theory.
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But in practice, the IOC has a long history of accommodating authoritarian regimes, always in the name of “neutrality,” “dialogue,” and “keeping sports separate from politics”, usually not in a particularly consistent or moral way.
In today’s Wumao Soup, we’ll tell you 15 things about the People’s Republic of China that you didn’t learn from TikTok, Douyin or DeepSeek.
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This is our 2nd Wumao Soup. In the 1st one, we introduced how the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) online propaganda works. Now we’ll cover some of the big topics they hide or lie about. Think of it as an antidote soup to their propaganda.
1 - Tiananmen Square massacre
Yes, it happened. Yes, it was a massacre. Vatniks, wumaos, and tankies in the West deny it, while China censors the slightest mention of it, even the date it happened.
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.
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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.
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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