Share this page!

Maybe Scrolly?
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Twitter logo
Jan 20 • 12 tweets • 7 min read
In today's #vatnik soup I'll be introducing an Australian propagandist and ex-news reporter, Mary Kostakidis (@MaryKostakidis). She's best known for her storming out from the SBS newsroom in 2007, after which she's been mostly doing hot takes on the US & NATO, Russia & China.1/11
Mary was setting up the SBS Television in the early 80s, and presented World News on the channel until 2007. In Aug, 2007, she stormed out of the SBS newsroom, protesting the increase in advertising time during the program and never looked back.

2/11
She's a former Chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation, a non-profit that's associated with the University of Sydney. They present the annual "Sydney Peace Prize", and some of the winners of this trophy include John Pilger and Noam Chomsky.

3/11
On 20, Feb, 2022, she was one of the signees in an open letter to the Australian government, calling for "US de-escalation" on the situation in Ukraine. The letter stated that "for more than a month now we have been subjected to cries of 'an imminent invasion of ...

4/11
... Ukraine by Russian forces' by the western press. We have been told that Putin has an invasion plan but no evidence of that has been given. Putin has consistently said that no invasion by Russia is planned or intended."

Russia invaded Ukraine four days later.

5/11
Her online presence is mostly on Twitter, where she retweets and comments on most prominent pro-Russian propagandists, including Caitlin Johnstone, Vanessa Beeley, Patrick Lancaster, George Galloway, Eva Bartlett, the Grayzone bloggers and Cameron Leckie.

6/11
I think that the most unbelievable thing about Kostakidis is that she worked almost thirty years in the newsroom, and today pretty much the only news she quotes come from fake news blogs and disinformation mills, or from paid pro-Russian propagandists.

7/11
But tweets speak louder than words, so here's some of the gems from her timeline (yes, I went through the thing and yes, it was painful):

8/11
- Mary celebrates BRICS collaboration with Putin and friends
- Mary shares the made-up story of "genocide in Donbas", as reported by the fake news blog CovertAction Magazine
- Mary shares Russian disinformation with paid actors in Mariupol

9/11
Naturally she has also parroted the Russian revisionism of NATO expansion.

10/11
Also, she's shared straight-up conspiracy theories about the MH17 plane shot down by the Russians, lies about "thousands of young Ukrainians" being tied to poles and tortured, and of course some high quality TASS propaganda.

11/11
Support my work (and get some AI art!): buymeacoffee.com/PKallioniemi

Related soups:

Lancaster:
The Grayzone:
George Galloway:
NATO expansion:

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Pekka Kallioniemi

Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @P_Kallioniemi

Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jan 22
In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner Group. I have written about the topic before, but now that it's been designated as a Transnational Criminal Organization by the US, we should reiterate some key points and update the latest news about them.

1/16 Image
Wagner is a Russian paramilitary organization that consists of network of mercenaries, and many consider it to be the private army of Putin. Private military companies are actually illegal in Russia, so basically the group operates beyond the law.

2/16 Image
Despite of its illegality, Wagner trains its personnel in a Russian MoD facility, Molkino. This camp is masked as a "children's vacation camp". New Lines magazine concluded that Wagner members come from fifteen different countries, but most of them are Russian.

3/16 Image
Read 17 tweets
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jan 21
In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce a Dutch "independent journalist", a columnist and a conspiracy theorist, Sonja van den Ende (@SonjaEnde). Sonja was recruited to report on Ukraine by Alexander Dugin through his Euroasia organization in March, 2022.

1/12 Image
Before the invasion, she was reporting from Syria, and even claimed to be related to the al-Assad family through her now-ex husband. She has accused the US and Israel of mass murder in Syria, and has praised Putin for his help in "defending the Syrian people".

2/12 Image
Van den Ende has spread conspiracy theories about the Syrian volunteer group the White Helmets, and she was also (naturally) involved in various COVID-19 and WEF related conspiracies.

3/12 Image
Read 13 tweets
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jan 19
In today's #vatnik soup and the newest edition of "You pronounced this nonsense, not me", I'll talk about the NATO expansion and how - according to Russia - NATO and the West are actually at fault for the war in Ukraine.

1/13
In 2007, around the same time when Russia started their "economic war" against Europe, Putin held a fiery speech at a Munich Security Conference in which he accused the West of expanding NATO, thus breaking a "solemn pledge" given by a US secretary ...

2/13
... of state James A. Baker to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990. According to some, Baker promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand to the east if Russia accepted Germany's unification.

But this was never agreed. What Baker actually promised was that NATO would expand ...

3/13
Read 14 tweets
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jan 18
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.
1/13 Image
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.

2/13 Image
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.

3/13 Image
Read 13 tweets
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jan 17
In today's #vatnik soup I'll be introducing a British reality TV star and a propagandist, George Galloway (@georgegalloway). He's best known for his appearance on Big Brother, affiliation with Russia state-media & his love for various authoritarian regimes around the globe.

1/15
Galloway has been a MP in 1987-2010 and in 2012-2015. He's currently leading the Workers Party of Britain, a party which has never held any elected presentation at any level of government.

George also doesn't like it when he's connected to Russia-state affiliated medias.

2/15
George has been a fan boy of several totalitarian leaders since the 90's. In 1994, during his unauthorized trip to Iraq, he met with Saddam Hussein and ended up his speech with a famous statement: "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability."

3/15
Read 19 tweets
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jan 16
In today's #vatnik soup I'll discuss how Russia and Putin influenced politics and attitudes in European countries since (at least) 2007 by investing into the energy, financing and the real estate sectors.

1/18
This analysis is based on Catherine Belton's "Putin's People" and Heather A. Conley's fantastic analysis from 2016 called "The Kremlin Playbook", and it partly explains why the West were so hesitant to act against Russia before Feb, 2022.

2/18
"Putin's Web" is a term coined by Belton. It refers to the interplay between intelligence services & economic services to exploit weaknesses in the system. It's a new version of USSR's "active measures", and they applied this tactic effectively in most European countries.

3/18
Read 18 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Send Email!

:(