In today's #vatnik soup I'll be introducing a Russian money launderer, convicted criminal and Prigozhin's personal propagandist, Oksana Vovk, also known as Mira Terada.
1/13
While living in the US, Oksana was pled guilty to money laundering and she was convicted to 30 months behind bars. She did plea in order to avoid a harsher conviction for drug trafficking.
2/13
Vovk was captured at Helsinki-Vantaa airport in Finland in 2018, and she was extradited into the US in 2019. After being released from prison, Vovk returned to Russia in 2021 where she started her new career as a state propagandist.
3/13
First, she organized a theatrical show where she posted a pile of letters of complaints about her stay in Finland. She claimed that Finland extradited her illegally to the US "to be tortured", she was put in a male prison (she was not), ...
4/13
... her medication was confiscated (they were not) and she wouldn't receive an important surgery while in Finland (she never had the surgery in Russia, either). She also declared that she was beat up by eight guards while naked in the US.
5/13
She stated that she'd been tortured for a whole year in a windowless cell, and that the guards played gun sounds 24/7 to "break her mind".
It almost sounds like they want to make the US prison system sound worse than the Russian one...
6/13
After returning to Russia, she was picked up by no other than Yevgeny Prigozhin to run a sham organization called "Foundation to Battle Injustice". At their front page, the first news is Tara Reade's claim that Joe Biden raped her.
7/13
So yeah, it's that kind of an organization. The site also states that Vovk was "wrongfully convicted", even though there was a mountain of evidence for the conviction and she actually plead guilty to it.
8/13
Finnish propagandist Janus Putkonen interviewed Oksana (and vice versa) in St. Petersburg in Jun, 2022. In this interview, Vovk repeated her accusations towards Finnish and US authorities, and said that she's running a foundation "for battling injustice in the world".
9/13
She had her own talk show, "Limits of Freedom" where he interviewed a Finnish pro-Putinist and MP, Ano Turtiainen. During the show, Mr Turtiainen claimed that Finland is "led from the outside" but that "real Finnish people" will not bend to the will of the EU and NATO.
10/13
He also stated that these "real Finnish" people want to keep up the old spirit of Finlandization and Russia-appeasing.
On 20, Jan, 2023, she organized an event called "International press forum Journalists under the scope: ...
11/13
... attacks on freedom of speech and reprisals against reporters" In this propaganda event she read propaganda statements from a paper and interviewed various disinformation and propaganda "journalists" such as Sonja van den Ende, from the West.
12/13
She also stated that the Grayzone blogger Max Blumenthal was persecuted in the US. As most of you know,the modus operandi of Prigozhin is to hire ex-convicts to do his dirty deeds & this is exactly what she did with Vovk.I'm sure we'll be seeing more of her BS in the future.13/13
Robert Amsterdam is also a registered (and well-paid!) agent of Maduro’s Venezuela, the socialist regime and ally of Russia which Tucker Carlson has recently defended for some reason, shocking many of his right-wing supporters.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll explain the context of the upcoming Budapest Blunder, and how it follows the infamous Alaska Fiasco from two months ago and Trump’s absurd delaying of serious aid to Ukraine and effective sanctions on Russia for the past nine months.
1/20
Two months ago, Trump embarrassed the United States by rolling out the red carpet for war criminal dictator Putin and overall acting like a pathetic servant eager to meet his master. Of course, the Alaska Fiasco didn’t bring peace any closer.
Worse, the main outcome of the humiliation was to delay serious sanctions, which the US Congress, in rare bipartisan unity against Russia, was on the verge of passing. Two weeks by two weeks, Trump Always Chickens Out, postponing any real pressure on Putin for 9 months now.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce American propagandist Alexandra Jost, aka “Sasha” (@sashameetsrus). She’s best known for being paid by the Russian state to spread pro-Kremlin propaganda — and for doing it with a big smile.
1/23
Alexandra, now 26, was born in Hong Kong. Her father is from Texas, and her mother is from Siberia. According to her, she has “dreamed of living in Russia since childhood.” Sasha's mother runs a dance studio in Moscow and her younger brother is avoiding mobilization.
2/23
Since the beginning of her creator career, Sasha has been adamant about one thing: that she’s “never had to be paid” to speak of her “love” for Russia. But, as always with Russia, this turned out to be nothing but vranyo — a Russian “tactical lie.”
In today’s Vatnik Soup REBREW, I’ll reintroduce an American political commentator and pro-Kremlin propagandist, Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson). He’s best known for his promotion of crazy conspiracy theories and for his support of authoritarian regimes around the world.
1/24
Tucker’s career spans decades, but he’s also been very active in recent years, so a lot has happened since our previous soup on him, which can be found here:
Once described as “the most powerful conservative in America”, Tucker has now fully transformed into a grifting conspiracy theorist and propagandist willing to work for whoever pays him the most. It’s unclear whether Tucker truly believes his endless conspiracy theories or…
3/24
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll cover the agenda-setting and flood of disinformation that spread on X and other platforms right after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. It’s far from the first or last time a tragedy has been weaponized for political purposes.
1/18
Every major political event, especially those involving violence, attracts massive attention. In the immediate aftermath, reliable information is scarce, making it highly vulnerable to both coordinated and improvised disinformation campaigns.
2/18
As I’ve mentioned in my previous soups and lectures, in disinformation campaigns, being first with a narrative is crucial, as people often remember the first version best — psychology studies show it sets the mental schema, and later updates rarely overwrite it.