In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce an American arms inspector, convicted criminal and a pro-Russian propagandist, Scott Ritter (@RealScottRitter). He's best known for his biased takes on the Russo-Ukrainian War, his propaganda work for RT and for his sex offenses.
1/16
Scotty continued the family tradition of military service, and he served as the lead analyst for Marine Corps Rapid Deployment Force during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq War. Ritter worked as a weapons inspector for the UN Special Commission between...
2/16
... 1991 and 1998. His main objective was to find and destroy possible WMD's and WMD-manufacturing capabilities in Iraq. UN inspectors were thrown out of Iraq in 1998 after which Ritter declared in an interview by Jim Lehrer that "without effective inspections, without ...
3/16
... effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short period of time measured in months, reconstitute chemical and biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their developing of nuclear weapons program".
4/16
His former UNSCOM boss, Richard Butler said that once Scott had made up his mind about something (usually about WMD's or other weapons), he'd be adamant about it, even when there was insufficient evidence to support his claims.
5/16
Journalist Matt Bai described Ritter as a person who "insists on his version of reality" and that he sees himself as the victim of a corrupted system. As a side note, research suggests that these type of people are more prone to conspiracy theories.
6/16
Ritter's views seems to be very much in line with his fellow ex-soldier, Douglas MacGregor: most - if not all - of his predictions have gone wrong, and his bias is extremely evident in all of his interviews.
In the "post-truth" society, ...
7/16
... this hardly matters as once their ludicrous statements have been debunked, they've already moved on to the next ones. The profiles of Ritter and MacDougal are also very similar: both have been serving in the US Army and both have faced harsh criticism for their work.
8/16
Scott's been the subject of law enforcement operations twice. In Jun, 2001, he was charged with a misdemeanor crime of "attempted endangerment of the welfare of a child" after trying to set up a date with a police officer posing as a 16-year old girl.
9/16
This charge was later dismissed, but he was arrested again in Nov, 2009, after he had exposed himself to a police officer posing as a 15-year old girl. Ritter rejected a plea bargain and was in prison from Mar, 2012 until Sep, 2014.
10/16
He's said that Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb, 2022, was not "an unprovoked act of aggression, but rather a legitimate exercise of its right". He also talked about Russia just defending the puppet states of Luhansk and Donetsk, and that the Ukrainian Army was ...
11/16
... "nothing more than a puppet of NATO". Around Feb-Mar of 2022, Ritter made some interesting predictions of which all turned out to be false. For example, on 25, Feb, 2022 he said that "Ukraine is getting schooled in the art of Urban warfare" in Kyiv.
12/16
He's said that the National Police of Ukraine are responsible for the Bucha massacre, and called Joe Biden a "war criminal" for shifting the blame on the massacre on the Russians. He also writes anti-NATO and anti-US themed articles for the RT.
13/16
In Jan, 2023, Ritter interviewed Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who was sentenced in the US to 25 years in prison for conspiring to sell weapons to a terrorist group. He had returned to Russia through a prisoner exchange in Dec, 2022.
14/16
In the interview Viktor claimed that he was convicted for crimes he never committed. Bout himself has been very eager about going to the front and fight against Ukraine. The movie Lord of War from 2005 starring Nicolas Cage is loosely based on Bout.
15/16
Ritter was supposed to be attending the "Rage Against the War Machine" rally as one of the speakers, but his picture and name was removed from the event's website in the past few days.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll talk about Finland and how pro-Kremlin propagandists have become more active in the Finnish political space since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For the first time since 2022, they’ve gained some political power in Finland.
1/16
Russia’s political strategy in countries with Russian-speaking minorities (such as Finland and the Baltics) is typically quite similar: it seeks to rally these minorities around issues like language and minority rights, and then frames the situation as oppression.
2/16
At the same time, Russian speakers are extremely wary and skeptical of local media, and instead tend to follow Russian domestic outlets like Russia-1 and NTV, thereby reinforcing an almost impenetrable information bubble.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll discuss the Ukrainian SBU’s “Spiderweb” operation and the main disinformation narrative vatniks have been spreading during the afterfall. While domestic Russian media stays silent, the vatniks and Russian milbloggers have been extremely loud.
1/20
This operation was probably the most impactful strike since the drowning of the Moskva, massively reducing Russia’s capability to bomb Ukrainian cities (or anyone else’s). It involved smuggling 117 FPV drones hidden in trucks into Russia. Once near airbases,…
2/20
…the roofs opened remotely, launching drones in synchronized waves to strike targets up to 4,000 km away. The mission took 18 months to plan. The unsuspecting Russian truck drivers who transported them had no idea they were delivering weapons deep behind their own lines.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Russian movie director, propagandist, and former priest: Ivan Okhlobystin. He’s best known for his strong support for the war on Ukraine and for his radical views, which are often used as a testbed for the domestic Russian audience.
1/20
Ivan was born in 1966 from a short-lived marriage between a 62-year-old chief physician and a 19-year-old engineering student. She later remarried, and the family moved from Kaluga province to Moscow. Ivan kept the surname Okhlobystin from his biological father.
2/20
After moving to Moscow, Ivan began studying at VGIK film school. He soon became a playwright for theatre productions and also wrote for Stolitsa magazine, which he later left because, as he put it, “it had become a brothel.”
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Ukrainian-born former State Duma deputy, Vladimir Medinsky. He is best known as one of the ideologues of the “Russkiy Mir”, for his close ties to Vladimir Putin, and for leading the “peace talks” in Turkey in 2022 and 2025.
1/20
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Medinsky interned as a correspondent on the international desk of the TASS news agency, learning the ways of propaganda at an early age. Some time later, he earned two PhDs – one in political science and the other in history.
2/20
As is tradition in Russia, Medinsky’s academic work was largely pseudo-scientific and plagiarized. Dissernet found that 87 of 120 pages in his dissertation were copied from his supervisor’s thesis. His second dissertation was also heavily plagiarized.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American social media influencer, Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson). He’s best known for his plagiarism while working as a clickbait “journalist”, and for being paid by the Kremlin to spread anti-Ukraine and anti-Democratic narratives.
1/23
Benny graduated from the University of Iowa in 2009 with a degree in developmental psychology. His former high school buddy described him as the “smartest, most articulate kid in school,” and was disappointed to see him turn into a “cheating, low standard hack.”
2/23
After graduating, Benny dived directly into the world of outrage media. Benny’s first job was writing op-eds for far-right website Breitbart, from where he moved on to TheBlaze, a conservative media owned by Glenn Beck, and a spring board for many conservative influencers.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Cypriot politician and social media personality, Fidias Panayiotou (@Fidias0). He’s best known for his clickbait YouTube stunts and for voting against aid to Ukraine and the return of abducted Ukrainian children from Russia.
1/20
Fidias hails from Meniko, Cyprus. In 2019, he began posting videos on YouTube. After a slow start, he found his niche with clickbaity, MrBeast-style content featuring silly stunts, catchy titles and scripted dialogue. Today, Fidias has 2,7 million subscribers on YouTube.
2/20
Fidias’s channel started with trend-riding, but he found his niche in traveling without money — aka freeloading. In one video, he fare-dodged on the Bengaluru Metro. The train authority responded by saying they would file a criminal case against him.