Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Mar 25, 2023 20 tweets 8 min read Read on X
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an Italian businessman, politician and ex-PM, Silvio Berlusconi. He's best-known for his media empire, for his pompous politics, for his trouble with the law, and especially for his long-time friendship with Vladimir Putin.

1/19
Berlusconi has been Prime Minister for a total of nine years, which in Italian politics can be considered an eternity - no other PM has served longer since WW2. He's also the controlling shareholder of Italy's largest commercial broadcaster in the country, Mediaset.

2/19
According to The Economist (or The Ecommunist, as Silvio calls it), controlled 90% of all national broadcasting in Italy while also being the PM.

Silvio has been at the center of many scandals throughout the years. In Aug, 2013, he was convicted of tax fraud and was...

3/19
...sentenced to four years in prison, but was exempted due to his old age and served his sentence by doing community service. He was also banned from holding public office, but refused to leave his leadership position at his political party, Forza Italia.

4/19
After he could take part in elections again, he was chosen as a MEP in 2019 and returned to the Italian Senate in 2022.

He's been involved in several court cases, of which at least six has been altered to "no conviction" because of news laws passed by his own parliament.

5/19
These crimes include bribery, embezzlement, perjury, tax evasion and false accounting. In Jun 2013, he was convicted of paying a 17-year-old prostitute called Karima El Mahroug for sex. The prosecution claimed that Silvio had paid over 4,5 million euros for ...

6/19
...El Mahroug's "services". Berlusconi appealed, and was acquitted from these charges later next year. In 2019 one of the main witnesses of the case, Imane Fadil, died mysteriously, and even death by radioactive poisoning was suggested (but ruled out later).

7/19
He's also been connected to the Sicilian Mafia, and for example the Mafia boss Giuseppe Guttadauro was heard stating that "Berlusconi, to solve his problems, has to solve ours" in a wiretapped conversation. Several informers and turncoats have suggested that Silvio has...

8/19
...connections to the top echelons of the Italian Mafia, but Berlusconi's never been charged for any of this.

Berlusconi has a long history with Putin. The first scandal where the two were connected to each other was in 2007, when Italy's state-owned energy company...

9/19
...Eni made a deal with state-owned Gazprom to build natural gas pipeline, South Stream, from Russia to Europe. The biggest beneficiary in the deal turned out to be Berlusconi's friend, Bruno Mentasti-Granelli. The deal was eventually blocked by the Italian Parliament.

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After Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, Silvio accused the US and the EU for "a ridiculously and irresponsibly sanctioning approach to the Russian Federation, which cannot but defend Ukrainian citizens of Russian origin that it considers brothers". He visited Crimea in 2015.

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Berlusconi was also the first Western leader to visit Belarusian dictator and potato man Lukashenko in 2009. He clearly had no idea who Lukashenko was, as he concluded the trip by saying: "Good luck to you and your people, whom I know love you".

12/19
After Russia's full-scale invasion in Feb, 2022, Silvio condemned his old friend, saying that he was deeply disappointed by Putin's behavior. This didn't last long, and already in Sep, 2022, he defended Vladimir Putin, saying that he invaded Ukraine only because he...

13/19
...wanted to replace the "Kyiv regime" with "decent people". In Oct, 2022, Italy's LaPresse news agency published a secretly taped recording where Berlusconi stated that he's recently "reconnected" with Putin. Putin had sent him 20 bottles of vodka, a clear violation...

14/19
...of the ongoing sanctions, and a "really sweet letter" for 86th his birthday. He had also sent Putin some Italian sparkling wine, Lambrusco. In the same tape he also suggested that the "West was already at war with Russia" because it is "giving Ukraine weapons and money".
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He also blamed Ukraine for Russia's invasion, referring to the 2014 Minsk agreement and saying that "Ukraine throws this treaty to hell a year later and begins attacking the borders of the two republics [referring to puppets states of DPR and LPR]".

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On 12 Feb, 2023, Berlusconi blamed Zelenskyy for the war in Ukraine, saying that "All [Zelenskyy] had to do was to stop attacking the two autonomous republics of the Donbas and this would not have happened".

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He added that "I judge, very, very negatively the behavior of this gentleman", referring to Zelenskyy. He also criticized Meloni for going to dinner with Zelenskyy, saying that he wouldn't have done the same.

18/19
It seems that at the moment the only person who's holding down the pro-Kremlin and pro-Putin bloc led by Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi is Giorgia Meloni, whose fiery speech on 23 Mar, 2023, is clear evidence that she still stands for Ukraine.

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

Past soups: vatniksoup.com
Related soups:
Matteo Salvini:

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Feb 22
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a former Ukrainian politician and president, Viktor Yanukovych. He’s best known for selling his country to Russia, trying to turn it into an authoritarian state, and eventually fleeing to Moscow once his plan failed.

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Now that Russia and the US are planning to replace president Zelenskyy with someone who’s more willing to sell the country to them (most probably Viktor Medvedchuk or one of his cronies), it’s a good time to remind people how Yanukovych and Putin almost took over Ukraine.

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Yanukovych’s first attempt at power came in 2004, when he “won” the Ukrainian presidential election through massive fraud. The rigged vote sparked the Orange Revolution, a wave of protests that forced the election to be re-run. His opponent, pro-Western candidate…

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Read 23 tweets
Feb 20
Russia uses Tucker Carlson as a vessel for its propaganda. Many of the most popular narratives originate from his misinformation-filled show, which is funded by Elon. Some of these lies include:

- Bioweapons labs
- Gonzalo Lira being a "journalist"
-Zelenskyy being a dictator
- The banning of the Russian Orthodox Church
- The banning of Viktor Medvedchuk's pro-Kremlin propaganda network
- Putin's interview and revisionism
- That ridiculous St. Petersburg propaganda piece

Bob Amsterdam, who Tucker has interviewed a few times is paid by a Russian oligarch, Vadym Novynskyi.

We now know from the Tenet Media case that Russian state media wants to spread Tucker's verbal diarrhea everywhere. These fake stories have finally made their way to Trump.Image
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Read 4 tweets
Feb 19
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll take out my crystal ball and predict what the alliance between the US and Russia could mean for Ukraine, Europe and geopolitics in general. These recent changes could be a real risk for the whole of Europe, and need to be addressed quickly.

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Some of us have been reporting on Trump’s pro-Kremlin tendencies for years now. His Moscow connections go back all the way to the late 80s, and the 2016 US presidential elections raised a lot of red flags about the close connections of his associates to Russian operatives.

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The recent Rubio-Lavrov meeting in Saudi Arabia was an eye-opening event for many who were still optimistic about Trump and Ukraine – the outcome was that Putin got absolutely everything he’s ever wanted from the war, and at the same time it seems that the US got nothing.

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Read 24 tweets
Feb 18
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce how the Elon’s Election Interference Machine™ (EIM) works. Since Musk & his broligarch allies won the presidency for Trump, they’ve now harnessed the machine to interfere in European elections, including the ones in Germany & Romania.

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At this point it is clear why Elon bought Twitter – his grand plan was to promote “free speech absolutism” (which, of course, doesn’t even exist on the platform) and tweak the algorithms so that they allow him to promote political parties that align with his worldview.

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First, let’s talk about “freedom of speech” that the Trump administration, especially Musk and VP Vance constantly rant about. Incidentally, they only blame the EU for “limiting free speech”, and there’s a good reason for this: they are driving for political change.

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Read 24 tweets
Feb 14
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce the Russian disinformation network “Doppelgänger”. Doppelgänger is an influence and hybrid operation spreading Kremlin propaganda via AI-generated fake news websites and social media sites, especially X.

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Doppelgänger is a massive influence operation that was initially exposed back in 2022. Their modus operandi is to create near-identical copies of large, legitimate Western news outlets to spread anti-Ukraine, anti-Western and anti-NATO narratives.

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The operation, overseen by Putin’s top aide Sergei Kiriyenko (who’s reportedly communicated with Elon), uses Russian firms like Social Design Agency (SDA) to create fake news sites that mimick legitimate media like The Washington Post, The Guardian, Bild and Fox News.

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Read 21 tweets
Feb 13
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’m going to talk about Europe’s information defense against foreign influence operations & disinformation.

The EU can’t rely anymore on America’s help in geopolitical struggles, and it’s time we created a united front against information threats.

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Recent news coming from the US should be the final wake-up call for European decision-makers. Recently, Trump’s rhetoric has been openly pro-Kremlin and both anti-Ukraine & anti-EU, and at the same time the US is dismantling all institutions fighting against disinformation.

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So far, the Trump administration has put staffers working on disinformation as well as a team of election security advisers at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on administrative leave.

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Read 25 tweets

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