Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Mar 5, 2023 16 tweets 7 min read Read on X
In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce a Russian blogger, "independent journalist" and propagandist, Semen Pegov. He's best-known for his work at WarGonzo, a military project associated with the Russian military intelligence service GRU.

1/15
Pegov started his journalism/propagandist career as a TV journalist for the Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Company in 2006. He was covering the Russo-Georgian War from the invaded Abkhazia, while working for a local TV channel.

2/15
In 2020, he was detained by Belarusian police while covering the protests held by the supporters of presidential candidate and opposition figure Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in Minsk.He was naturally released soon after, thanks to the intervention of the Russian Foreign Ministry.3/15
In Jan, 2022, Pegov spread fake news on his Telegram channel WarGonzo in which he accused the Ukrainian authorities of arming territorial defense forces & sending them to kill civilians in Donbas. This message was subsequently echoed by the Kremlin-controlled media channels.
4/15
On 18 Feb, 2022, Semen was organizing casus belli for the upcoming Russian invasion, when he published a video of a destroyed car that belonged to one of the leaders, Denis Sinenkov, of the puppet state DPR.

5/15
This car bombing was blamed on the Ukrainian special services, was referred as "preparation for Kyiv’s offensive", and was used as one of the reasons for the full-scale invasion.

Man, he was so lucky to be nearby when the bombing happened!

6/15
Throughout the summer of 2022, Pegov published a number of staged and fake photos, building up a narrative of Russian military success in Ukraine. In Apr, 2022, he posted pictures of dead Ukrainians soldiers, ...

7/15
...stating that the Russian military had killed "saboteurs from the Azov Regiment". An investigation revealed that these soldiers were executed with a shot to the head at point-blank range.

8/15
In May, 2022, Semen published a fabricated story and video about the destruction of a 🇺🇦 drone. The video included a section that should've been cut out from the final version. In it, the Russian soldiers are waiting for Pegov's command to start firing an anti-aircraft gun.

9/15
He also published a video allegedly discovering a secret biolab in Mariupol where NATO had conducted research on biological weapons.

This hoax was debunked by StopFake: stopfake.org/uk/fejk-u-mari…

10/15
But there's more! In Jul, 2022, he suggested on Russian media that the Turkish and the US governments were supplying veteran ISIS soldiers to Ukraine. He also claimed that he had seen an Al-Qaeda flag next to the Azov Regiment's flags in Mariupol.

11/15
And as is tradition in Russia, Pegov accused the Ukrainian forces of what the Russians had done before. He claimed that the Ukrainian army had used phosphorus munitions,an internationally banned method of warfare: dzen.ru/video/watch/62…
It was actually Russia who used them.12/15
In May, 2022, Pegov was banned from YouTube, but he subsequently moved to other platforms to spread his disinformation. His main channel of communication is Telegram.

In Sep, 2022, he was arrested for, according to WarGonzo, threatening a hotel administrator while drunk.

13/15
Later on he was wounded near Donetsk after stepping on a petal mine. His leg had to be partially amputated.

As you can probably guess, Pegov's target audience is solely Russian, but many of his staged videos also make rounds on non-Russian propaganda channels.

14/15
Pegov was allegedly awarded secretly with the Medal of the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" for his propaganda work (or "objective coverage of events", as the Kremlin called it) during the annexation of Crimea.

He also later received a medal for his lost leg.

15/15
Support my work (and get some AI art!): buymeacoffee.com/PKallioniemi

Past soups: vatniksoup.com

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Dec 20
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American radio host and propagandist, Scott Horton (@scotthortonshow). He’s best known for blaming Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine on the US, and for publishing a 700-page book full of Kremlin propaganda.

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Most of you probably remember Scotty from this recent episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored, in which he was schooled for his revisionist propaganda by Ukrainian volunteer and activist Anastasiya Paraskevova (@UkrainianAna).

2/23
Let’s start with the obvious - Scott Horton is a hardcore Kremlin apologist who sees nothing wrong with what Putin does, but strongly condemns anything that Ukrainians do to defend themselves. For Horton,the enemy is the US and all of its allies. The way this works is that…
3/23
Read 24 tweets
Dec 4
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss the sad (but funny) state of Finnish vatniks. After Russia launched their full-scale invasion against Ukraine, the Finnish pro-Kremlin/conspiracy theorist scene experienced a dramatic devaluation and hasn’t been able to bounce back since.
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I often get asked about the current state of the Finnish vatnik club, and there’s usually not much to report.

It’s not because these people have stopped, but because today their work has only comedic value.

So here’s the latest:

2/20
Master vatnik and traitor Johan Bäckman has relocated to Russia, and he was recently given a Russian citizenship. It’s obvious that Johan was recruited by Russia’s intelligence agencies a long time ago. He’s still producing videos on YouTube on his…

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Read 21 tweets
Nov 29
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Romanian politician and conspiracy theorist, Călin Georgescu (@calin_georgescu). He’s best-known for his pro-Kremlin and conspiratorial views, running for president of Romania, and doing it by only campaigning on TikTok.

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Georgescu has a doctorate in pedology (a branch of soil science), and held various positions in Romania’s environment ministry during the 90s.

Between 1999-2012, he was a representative for Romania on the national committee of the United Nations Environment Program.

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He was proposed as Romania’s prime minister in 2011, 2012 and 2016 by Romanian far-right parties, but he rose to international infamy in 2024, when he ran for president of Romania independently and obtained the most votes (22,95%) out of all candidates in the first round.

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Read 26 tweets
Nov 28
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Canadian journalist and alleged Soviet/Russian spy, David Pugliese (@davidpugliese). He’s best-known for his articles about “Ukrainian Nazis”, and for allegedly being a spy for both the Soviet Union and later Russia.

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Several months ago I was anonymously sent a pile of documents from the mid-80s originating from the KGB archives in Kyiv. These documents outlined a KGB recruitment into “Stuart”, or David Pugliese who “works in foreign mass media” and who is…

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..“studied with the perspective of possible operative use”. Another document described “Stuart’s” contact “Ivan”, who allegedly became his handler.Some have speculated that “Ivan” is Fred Weir, a correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor.He’s lived in Moscow since 1986.
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Read 22 tweets
Nov 11
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American far-right social media personality, Nicholas J. Fuentes (@NickJFuentes). He’s best-known for his white supremacist, misogynistic and antisemitic rhetoric, and for being the poster boy for the so-called incel movement.

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Like so many from the white supremacist movement, Fuentes dropped out of university after his freshman year. He studied introductory international relations, which apparently made him a geopolitics expert. Nick was introduced to the white supremacist movement at an…

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..early age - he took part in the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,Virginia. In 2017, Fuentes launched his political talk show “America First”. Initially the show was aired on Trump-aligned Right Side Broadcasting Network, but it was dropped after the rally.
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Read 20 tweets
Nov 7
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss foreign malign influence operations during the 2024 US elections. As in 2016 and 2020, these recent elections were also a target of massive disinformation and hacking campaigns originating mostly from Russia and Iran.

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First of all, my opinion is that these influence operations alone didn’t affect the elections so much, that they actually made a difference.

Unlike in 2016, Trump’s win over Harris was clear and these short-term campaigns didn’t really change that much this time.

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Yet, many of these online campaigns attacked both Harris and Walz on various social media platforms. Especially Walz became a big target after his nomination, and many Russian efforts attempted to defame him.

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Read 18 tweets

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