In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce yet another "independent journalist". She's an American Canadian conspiracy theorist and propagandist, Eva Bartlett. Eva is part of the "may be partially or wholly under the editorial control of the Russian government" gang.
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Like so many of these so-called journalists, she started as a Palestine activists, and she was a campaigner for the International Solidarity Movement. Bartlett visited Gaza several times, reported about the situation there in her blog.
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She also did speaking tours around North America. Eventually she moved on to Syrian civil war.
These days Bartlett is very much in the same group of al-Assad and Putin apologists as the Grayzone blogger Max Blumenthal, Sonja van den Ende and Vanessa Beeley.
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She is one of the most popular propagandists of this group, and her videos have been viewed millions of times. Bartlett rose to notoriety in 2016, when she was doing some Russia and Syria sponsored reporting from Syria. She stated in a video that there's "overwhelming ...
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...support" for president al-Assad in Syria, and that the rescue organization White Helmets was Western propaganda and that "no one in eastern Aleppo has heard of them". She accused the NGO of recycling actors and footage.Ironically she's done this exact thing in her reports.5/10
In the same footage she suggested that the al-Quds hospital bombing was propaganda and never occurred. This message was of course spread by RT and Sputnik. Syrian government also staged a discussion between Bartlett and the UN.
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All of these statements were naturally lies and were debunked by several outlets. For example, the advocacy group The Syria Campaign and the US-based think tank Atlantic Council have debunked many of Bartlett's lies about the White Helmets.
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As history has shown, these "independent journalists" often support most totalitarian regimes around the world: in 2017 Eva visited North Korea, and suggested that most of the misery and poverty in there are a result of American imperialism.
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Since Apr, 2022, Bartlett has been reporting on Ukraine, sometimes selling her coverage of the events to RT. In Jul, 2022, she was one the speakers at the International Public Tribunal on Ukraine, a propaganda event to for defaming Ukraine and Ukrainians.
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Eva Bartlett has lived in Russia since 2019. She has 48k followers on Youtube and almost 130k followers on Twitter, which makes her a relatively popular pro-Russian propagandist.
In today's #vatnik soup we'll travel back to Ireland, and get to a know an Irish politician and a MEP, Clare Daly. She strongly aligns herself with another Irish MEP, Mick Wallace. Like Wallace, Daly spends most of her energy appeasing Russia and China and criticizing the US.1/11
After several attempts, she was finally elected to Dáil Éireann in 2011 general election. In 2012, she was accused of misusing travel funds. In the same year, she refused to call for the resignation of her political ally, Mick Wallace.
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Wallace's company forgot to pay 2,1 million EUR in VAT. After the incident, she resigned from the Socialist Party. After leaving, she requested a share of her old party's allowance so that she can fund her activities as an independent MP.
In today's #vatnik soup we'll get to know our first French vatnik: he's a former soldier and a current Russian propagandist, Adrien Bocquet. By his own words, he came to Ukraine at the beginning of the war to provide "humanitarian aid".
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In May, 2022, Bocquet was interviewed by Andre Bercoff on Sud Radio. The whole show was classic Russian propaganda and disinformation from the beginning to the end. Bocquet's made-up stories were a lousy attempt at disproving the massacre conducted by the Russians in Bucha.
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During the show Adrien denied any wrongdoings by the Russian forces in Bucha & stated that the war crimes over were actually done by the Azov Regiment.He also said that the American journalists were "in on it" & helped the Ukrainians to stage the fake scene with dead bodies.
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In today's #vatnik soup, I'll talk about Russiagate and the Russian interference in the 2016 US elections. Twitter Files by @mtaibbi and The Grayzone blogger @aaronjmate have often suggested that the Russians had no effect on the election, which simply isn't true.
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Many pro-Russian actors have been downplaying the effects of Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns during the 2016 elections.
In Jan, 2023, Eady et al. published their research on Nature Communications which concluded that ...
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on Twitter, 1) the Russian disinformation was heavily concentrated, 2) the exposure was focused on people who identify as Republicans, and 3) the Russian influence campaign was eclipsed by content from domestic news media and politicians.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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".
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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.