In today's #vatniksoup I'll introduce hand-picked anti-NATO commentary by various Finnish, pro-Kremlin voices. As of today, all 30 NATO countries have ratified Finland's application to NATO, which resulted in many unhappy Finnish Putin fans.
1/14
One of the biggest anti-NATO figures in Finland has been Panu Huuhtanen (@HuuhtanenPanu). Panu has a long history of organizing demonstrations, and lately he's been active in protesting against Finland's NATO membership. He's also a HUGE fan of Vladimir Putin.
2/14
In May 2022, he tweeted that Finland and Sweden can "stop this NATO mess" based on Erdogan's political statements. In Jul 2022, he continued this narrative on Russian social media platform, VKontakte. He's often acting as a "journalist" at anti-NATO demonstrations.
3/14
Kremlin-paid "independent journalist", "Finnish patriot" and editor-in-Chief of fake news blog MV-Lehti, Janus Putkonen (@janus_putkonen) has been trying to stop Finland's NATO process since it begun.
4/14
MV-Lehti is the biggest Kremlin information laundering service in Finland and Putkonen's financial ties to Kremlin have been proven in a 2016 e-mail leaks.
5/14
Putkonen and his pals even wrote an appeal to Hungary's Parliament at the wake of their ratification vote in Mar 2023.
In the past Janus lived in Luhansk, Ukraine, but his current location is unknown - he most probably already fled to Russia.
6/14
Johan Bäckman (@johanbek) is Finland's oldest and biggest (literally and figuratively) Russian troll. He's been involved in spreading and promoting pro-Kremlin narratives for good 20 years, and he's not showing any signs of slowing down. He's the gentleman with the Z symbol.
7/14
He's currently candidate for the Finnish parliamentary election in the pro-Russian party VKK. Johans's organized the "Great NATO discussion", a anti-NATO propaganda talk, often featuring the most prominent Finnish pro-Russian propagandists.
8/14
Bäckman's often "representing Finnish views" on Russian national TV. He's also been convicted of stalking YLE journalist Jessikka Aro to a 60-day suspended prison sentence.
9/14
Ano Turtiainen (@TurtiainenAno) is the chairperson of the political party VKK ("Power to the People"). Their pro-Russian stance has been evident for a long time, and after Feb 2022, Ano has spread pro-Russian narratives on social media on almost daily basis.
10/14
Ossi Tiihonen (@OssiTiihonen) is the chairperson of the political party Vapauden Liitto ("Alliance for Freedom"). He became prominent with his COVID-19 antivaxx and climate change critical theories, and after Russia started their full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he ...
11/14
...started touting his pro-Russian views. On social media he's more focused on the WEF/Great Reset conspiracy theory, but he's often stated that Finland should "normalize" relations with Russia and start buying their energy again.
12/14
Then there's also Juha Korhonen (@Juha_Korh2), a candidate for Vapauden Liitto, but not even the people in his political sphere care what he says.
13/14
To conclude: As was expected, Finland's application to NATO was ratified in a record time and a small group of conspiracy theorists and pro-Kremlin puppets couldn't do a thing to stop it.
I'm also sure that our little brother Sweden will be allowed to join NATO soon, too.
In this 9th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss “legitimate military targets”. Russia illegally invaded Ukraine, with no declaration of war, hiding behind a “special military operation”. Yet vatniks & useful idiots pretend Russia has any legitimate or lawful targets in Ukraine.
1/8
Russia started the war in 2014 by seizing Crimea with unmarked soldiers, “little green men”. Russians have been waging an undeclared, illegal war with endless war crimes ever since, whether it’s kidnapping of Ukrainian children with genocidal intent…
… the concentration camps for Ukrainians under occupation, conscripting Ukrainians from occupied territories, or the terrorist, deliberate bombing of civilians, including their infamous “double tap” strikes.
So no, Russia does not have any “legitimate targets” in Ukraine.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Hasan Piker, a Turkish-American streamer and millionaire. He’s best known for his champagne socialism, rabid criticism of the US and Israel, support for the Soviet Union and for Chinese and Russian invasions, and for mistreating his dog.
1/20
Born in 1991, Piker grew up in a privileged and well-connected environment. His father held senior roles at big corporations and his uncle, Cenk Uygur, is the founder of The Young Turks media network. He graduated cum laude from Rutgers, a top-tier university in New Jersey.
2/20
His main activity and primary source of income consists of hours-long livestreams on Twitch where he comments on news and yells at videos. He also keeps his dog in place the whole time with a shock collar.
What you see happening here is coordinated strategic communication by the Trump cult. Elon’s baby mama and former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair explained this ecosystem in a long video. They have built platforms where people can find narratives to spread and get paid for doing so.
Even though the system technically breaks the platform's ToS, this is perfectly fine for @nikitabier and the rest of the X crew, because Elon pays their salaries and this is part of his election interference machinery.
If you wanna know how the system works, read this:
Here’s Ashley’s video, where she explains how the system works. She was immediately attacked by various MAGA actors, which suggests that what she said hit a nerve.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and politician. He’s best known for rising to power at the height of the Greek debt crisis, not solving anything but endearing himself to the left, and using his fame to promote Russian imperialism.
1/20
Born in 1961 in Athens, Varoufakis studied economics in the UK and built an academic career in Australia, the US, and Europe. His early work focused on game theory, political economy, and critiques of capitalism.
2/20
Presenting himself as the fearless, unorthodox economist willing to confront the EU’s “neoliberal” elites, he rose to prominence during Greece’s debt crisis. At its height in 2015, he was appointed finance minister under the left-wing Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras.
In this 8th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss complaints about US financing of NATO, in particular how the US allegedly pays for European defense, leading to calls for a US withdrawal from the Alliance — which would only make it easier for Putin to invade more countries.
1/7
NATO by itself costs peanuts. In fact, the core of NATO is a principle, an agreement, that ideally costs nothing. The main cost is defense spending, which the US is eagerly doing anyway: Trump has just announced a 50% increase in military spending for his “Department of War”. 2/7
To sow division and thereby weaken the Alliance, vatniks deliberately mix up different figures, such as contributions to the NATO common budget, with defense spending. And US military spending has been huge by the sheer fact that the US is the world’s largest economy.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll talk about why we’re doing this: why we think Ukraine is so important and why we believe that souping vatniks and debunking their propaganda narratives is so crucial to counter Russia’s & their allies’ wars of aggression and achieve real peace.
1/20
War is expensive, and Russia is not a rich country that could afford this: Hospitals? Roads? Plumbing? No: everything into terror and destruction.
But not only that. There is a 2nd item in the Russian state budget that remains strong no matter what:
Manufacturing support for that terror and destruction. Propaganda. Vatniks. “Innocent” travel bloggers. “Independent” journalists. “Patriotic” politicians. Russia spends hundreds of billions of rubles a year ($5 billion) on this, and that kind of money buys you A LOT of BS.