In today's 100th edition of #vatnik soup I'll talk about false flags and casus belli. Russia has utilized false flag tactics to justify their aggression in various conflicts in the past, and they will probably try to use them in the future, too.

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But first let's talk what so-called false flag operations are. The term comes from 16th century naval warfare, where pirates and privateers flew the neutral or a friendly flag to hide their true identity which allowed them to move closer to the enemy before attacking them.

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The first known use of false flag operations as pretext for war was the Russo-Swedish War, when in 1788 the Swedish sewed Russian military uniforms in order to stage an attack on Swedish outpost, Puumala. Russians probably learned a thing or two from this operation.

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The Soviets used this tactic in Nov, 1939, when the Soviet army shelled Mainila, a Russian village near the border of Finland. The Soviets then blamed the Finnish for this incident and used it a casus belli - a justification for war - starting Winter War some days later.

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In 1968, the Kremlin used the KGB to organize a false flag operation in Czechoslovakia to justify a Soviet intervention in the country. Czechoslovakia's Alexander Dubček was attempting to adopt democratic reforms in the country, calling it a "socialism with a human face".

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After the collapse of the USSR, KGB archives revealed that Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov used 20 so-called illegals who posed as students, journalists, etc. to fabricate stories that attacked the reformists, tried to get anti-Soviet articles published in the local ...

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media, and planted evidence of a "Western plot" to support the reformists. Sound familiar?

Then, in 1999 Putin used this age-old tactic to fortify his leadership position in Russia. Several apartment buildings in Moscow, Buynaksk and Volgodonsk were bombed, ...

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killing more than 300 civilians and injuring over 1000. These bombings were then blamed on the Chechen rebels and they were used as a justification for what eventually became the Second Chechen War.

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These bombs were planted by the FSB,but one of the bombs located in Ryazan failed to detonate & was found in a basement. A telephone service employee tapped a suspicious call from Ryazan to Moscow & overheard instructions: "Leave one at a time, there are patrols everywhere".
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The phone call was traced to FSB offices. FSB later explained that the "bomb was fake" & that the whole thing was a "training exercise".Additionally,Russian politician Gennadiy Seleznyov announced one of the explosions in the Russian Duma three days before it even happened.10/15 Image
Several pro-Russian "independent journalists" have been reporting alleged false flag operations in Ukraine. One of these incidents was reported by Patrick Lancaster in the puppet state of DPR.He published a staged video of a "pre-war provocation" from Donbas, in which IED...11/15 ImageImage
... had allegedly killed one of the military commanders of the made-up state of DPR. 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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But most of the Russian efforts to conduct false flag operations in Ukraine before and after the full-scale invasion have failed. This is due a drastic change in how intelligence services report their findings - US and UK officials have shared their intel openly with ...

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... prominent newspapers, who have then reported these plans. It is very difficult to do an operation when everyone's already aware it might happen. This rather genius tactic has faltered most of Russia's false flag attempts.

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These days both Ukraine and Russia blame the other party of planning false flag operations, but after the full-scale invasion the number of actual operations has been surprisingly low.

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Feb 14
In today's #vatnik soup I'll be introducing a Portuguese "independent journalist" and a politician, Bruno Carvalho. Carvalho is part of the gang that does live - and often staged - reports from Russian-controlled areas of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.

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Bruno's political affiliation is with the communists, and he was elected to city hall of Amadora as a member of the communist party CDU/PCP. Allegedly he joined the party at a very young age, as there's video footage of a 19-year old Bruno being interviewed about politics.

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Perhaps due to his political background, Carvalho is all about them Ukrainian nazis. He calls the Azov Regiment "the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion", being consistent with the views of his party, PCP.

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Read 18 tweets
Feb 10
Syksy has joined Aaron Maté and Caitlin Johnstone in their efforts to downplay the crimes of the al-Assad regiment in Syria. He has criticized the White Helmets, a volunteer organization that do medical evacuation and urban search and rescue missions, and ...

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... referred to them being a "US gov't co-founded/funded organization pushing for US military escalation".

He retweeted and promoted a story written by Max Blumenthal on the Grayzone blog about how parts of the 86-page report "If the Dead Could Speak: Mass Deaths and ...

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... Torture in Syria’s Detention Facilities" and the following sanctions were actually "a highly deceptive intelligence operation orchestrated by the US and Qatari governments".

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Read 12 tweets
Feb 10
In today's #vatnik soup I'm going to introduce a Finnish cosmologist, human rights activist and a board member of @amnestyfinland, Syksy Räsänen (@SyksyRasanen). His stance - at least on Twitter - so far on the Russo-Ukrainian War has been heavily anti-Ukrainian.

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Räsänen is a internationally recognized cosmologist. He received his PhD from theoretical physics in 2002, and has worked in several prominent universities and organizations, such as Oxford University, CERN and University of Geneva.

2/15
Syksy was also writing for "Searching for Cosmos" blog ("Maailmankaikkeutta etsimässä" in Finnish) that appeared in a Finnish magazine Science ("Tiede" in Finnish), but stopped because he didn't want to share the platform with Marko Hamilo, whose writings he thought to ...

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Read 16 tweets
Feb 9
In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce a Ukrainian-born, Russian Mafia boss Semion Mogilevich. He's been described by the FBI as "the most dangerous mobster in the world" & he's been accused of weapons trafficking,contract murders, extortion, drug trafficking & prostitution.
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Some reports state that Mogilevich made a significant amount of money as a middle man selling jewelry and artwork belonging to Jews who emigrated from Kyiv during the 1980s. For this, he was convicted to prison twice: his first stint lasted 3 years and the 2nd 4 years.

2/16
In 1995, head of the Solntsevskaya Bratva, Sergei Mikhailov allegedly tried to execute Mogilevich in Prague over a disputed payment of 5 million USD. They were supposed to attend a birthday party at the Mogilevich-owned restaurant "U Holubů", but Mogilevich never arrived ...
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Read 17 tweets
Feb 8
In today's #vatnik soup, I'll introduce a Ukrainian businessman, Dmytro Firtash. He's best known for funneling money into the pro-Russian political campaigns in Ukraine. He's also been connected to the Russian Mafia boss Semion Mogilevich.

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Firtash established his trading company Chernivtsi, Ukraine, and eventually moved to Moscow in the early 1990s. Firtash's diversified international group companies, Group DF, concentrates on chemical industry and energy and real estate sectors.

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In addition to Group DF, Firtash is co-owner of RosUkrEnergy, a Swiss-registered company that's 50% owned by Gazprom, and the other 50% of ownership can be connected to Firtash and Ivan Fursin.

3/14
Read 15 tweets
Feb 7
In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce a Ukrainian billionaire, philanthropist and the richest man in Ukraine, Rinat Akhmetov. He's the founder, sole proprietor and president of System Capital Management (SCM). Allegedly he also has ties to organized crime.

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Akhmetov was born in Donetsk Oblast and he is an ethnic Volga Tatar. Details about Akhmetov's past are controversial and there are contradictory stories on how he gained his wealth after the fall of USSR.

2/19
Rinat himself has said that he made his fortune by "trading coal and coke" and investing on assets that "no one wanted to buy". Ukrainian author Serhiy Kuzin has claimed that Akhmetov was a "mafia thug" in the 80s.

3/19
Read 20 tweets

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