In today's #vatniksoup we'll visit Germany for the first time, as I introduce a Russo-German "journalist" and propagandist, Alina Lipp. She's best-known for her pro-Russian TG channel "Neues aus Russland" ("News from Russia") where she spreads propaganda and disinformation.
1/20
In her previous life she studied sustainable governance at the Leuphana University Lüneburg, focusing on environmental studies. Lipp was involved in German politics as a member of the Greens party, but at some point suggested that they were too "anti-Russian" for her.
2/20
Lipp's mother is German and father is Russian. According to Alina, her father told him the truth about the Russo-Ukrainian conflict around 2014, after the Revolution of Dignity and after Russia annexed Crimea.
3/20
After the annexation, she actually travelled to Crimea and started a YouTube channel called "Glücklich auf der Krim" ("Happy in Crimea").
I consider Lipp to be a part of the group of "relatively attractive, young women who do pro-Kremlin propaganda" along with people...
4/20
...like Mira Terada, Maria Butina, Liubov Sivaya and Anna Chapman. Their job is to show everything Russia does in a good light and constantly criticize the West and Ukraine. They have all now relocated to Russia or to areas that Russia occupies illegally.
5/20
In an Orwellian way, she calls herself a "peace journalist". At some point she started reporting from Donbas, where she often complained how badly the civilians are doing due to "Ukrainian shelling". She's stated that in most, if not all, cases Ukraine "fired first".
6/20
In Jan, 2022, she was part of the big group claiming that Russia does not want war and is a peaceful country. On 16 Feb, 2022, she was visiting a conference called "Geopolitical war of the West against Russia: the Ukrainian case" in Russia.
7/20
At the end of Feb, 2022, she reasoned that the "special military operation" was necessary due to the "genocide" of Russian-speaking population in Donbas by the Ukrainian "Nazi regime". Based on Lipp, Putin doesn't kill civilians and actually "saves lives".
8/20
As of today, her "Neues aus Russland" is one of the biggest pro-Russian Telegram channels (and definitely the biggest one in German) with over 185 000 subscribers. Most of its content is naturally just parroting of the most popular Kremlin narratives.
9/20
She's spread (fake) horror stories of "Ukrainian organ trade" and refuted Russian bombing of kindergarten. She's claimed that it was actually the Ukrainians who bombed the Mariupol theater with children and women inside.
10/20
She's also downplayed the number of civilian casualties, spicing it up with an image from Russian music video where a "corpse" moves inside a body bag. This same video was shared during the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming that it was actually a hoax "plandemic".
11/20
Lipp uses this method a lot: she often posts debunked or fake videos from various contexts, usually from Russia. Sometimes she deletes her posts after someone points out the truth, sometimes she doesn't.
12/20
Now there can be two explanations for her actions: she is either a) willingly spreading debunked disinformation, or b) gullible and naive. I honestly don't know which one of these is worse.
13/20
In Nov, 2022, she was guest at the Forum of International Friends of Crimea held at the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow. There she even gave an empowered speech in support to Russian troops that she claims are now "fighting against NATO".
14/20
Her website is still very active, and her latest blog post and video on Donbas is from 6 Mar, 2023. In the first part she explained how Ukrainians "terrorize" Donbas and in this second edition she interviews pro-Putin actors about these "terrors".
15/20
She's even tried to do some comedy, but as we all know that Germans and humor are usually not a very good mix (just kidding). In a video she published on her website she played the German minister for foreign affairs, Annalena Baerbock.
16/20
German government has stated they are investigating Lipp's propaganda activities in Ukraine, and she may face up to three years in prison. The accusations were especially about the "genocide in Donbas" narrative, which have been proven to be a lie on many occasions.
17/20
All this information came from Lipp herself, so it should be taken with a grain of salt. In Germany, hate speech is still very much against the law and the authorities are simply following these laws, but it has become a very effective propaganda weapon against the West...
18/20
...for all pro-Russian actors, including Alina herself. But even if she was sentenced to prison for 3 years (which I REALLY doubt), that would still be 5 years less than what the Russian opposition leader Ilya Yashin got for discussing over the Bucha massacre.
19/20
Interestingly, most of her channels and her website don't contain any ads (or perhaps they've been demonetized), so in theory it is unclear how Lipp makes a living.
And a little dessert: Alina's little propaganda event in Berlin was cancelled by @BrotfabrikBln after they received more information on the nature of her work.
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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.
In today’s May 9th Vatnik Soup, we discuss the ambiguous relationship of the Kremlin with Nazism and explain why so many vatniks can be outright Nazis, and promote or excuse them while at the same time being so hysterical about alleged “Nazis in Ukraine”.
1/23
Of course, Kremlin propaganda employs the Firehose of Falsehood and often lacks any consistent ideology other than spreading chaos and seeking power, so such contradictions can be commonplace. However in this case there is a certain cynical consistency there.
2/23
To understand modern Russia, we need to go back a hundred years to the beginnings of Soviet Russia/Soviet Union — a genocidal terror regime under dictators Lenin and Stalin, whose totalitarian and imperialist legacy Putin’s Russia fully embraces.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll discuss the state of X in May 2025. Since its acquisition by Elon Musk, this platform has rapidly transformed into his personal political tool and a breeding ground for hate speech and disinformation.
1/22
Not everyone is following this shitshow as closely as I am, so I thought it would be good to write a summary of all the changes that have happened on this forum and outside of it. These changes have drastically changed how the platform operates and who gets “a voice” here.
2/22
Elon’s team has been tweaking the algorithm many times after the takeover. One of these tweaks happened already around Nov 2022, when the platform heavily suppressed the visibility of pro-Ukraine accounts. This change was then noticed & reported by many pro-Ukraine accounts.
3/22