Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Apr 8, 2023 25 tweets 10 min read Read on X
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a Russian politician and economist, Sergey Glazyev. He's best-known for his long career in Russian politics, and for his leaked phone calls in regard to Russian meddling in Ukraine before, during and after the Revolution of Dignity.

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Sergey was born in Zaporizhzhia, in the Ukrainian SSR. His father was Russian & mother Ukrainian. After getting his doctorate from the Moscow State University,he entered government service becoming the First Deputy Minister of External Economic Relations under Yegor Gaidar.

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Gaidar was best-known for his economic reform known as "shock therapy" - with the help of US economists, Gaidar and his posse tried to transform the Soviet system into free market capitalism overnight. It was a disaster for everyone except the oligarchs and organized crime.

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Glazyev was elected to State Duma in 1993, collaborating with now-eunuch Dmitry Rogozin. He was also involved in the short-lived nationalist party, the Congress of Russian Communities, whose main function was to work as a fake opposition for Boris Yeltsin.

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He also ran for President in 2004, gaining 4,1% of the total vote. In 2007, Sergey announced that he'd leave Russian politics, arguing that Putin's authoritarianism had killed all opposition in the country, only to come back after Putin appointed him as a presidential aide.

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In Mar, 2014 Sergey stated that the "entire crisis in Ukraine was orchestrated, provoked, and financed by American institutions in cooperation with their European partners," continuing that these institutions financed and trained the Ukrainian neo-Nazi movement.

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A year before, in 2013, he called Ukraine's collective will to integrate into the EU as a "some kind of sick self-delusion". He called former President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, a Nazi, stating that he was elected illegitimately.

As is tradition in Russia,...

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..he said that "this Nazi government is bombing the largest region in Ukraine [referring to Donbas]". In Aug 2017, he claimed that Ukraine is "occupied territory", with only "servicemen of American aggressors" who receive instructions and funding from the American embassy.

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But this is all basic level State Duma member/Kremlin propagandist rhetoric, what makes Glazyev different from others? In 2016 Ukrainian authorities published phone calls intercepted by the SBU between Glaziev and people who were directly involved in the pro-Russian...

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...demonstrations in various cities around Ukraine, including Odessa and Kharkiv in 2014. As the Surkov leaks of 2016 provided evidence for the Russian meddling in the Donbas in 2014 and after, the Glazyev tapes proved it in various other areas.

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Based on these leaks, Russia was planning to invade the so-called Novorossiya, consisting of large Ukrainian regions in the east and in the south of Ukraine, thus creating a land bridge to Crimea.

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In the phone calls, Glazyev instructed the pro-Russian agents on how to increase the impact of the riots and how to eventually occupy administration buildings. He also instructed these agents on receiving funding for the insurrections.

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From his phone call to "Prime Minister of Crimea", Sergey Aksyonov, we get a general idea how the process goes: throw out the "Banderovtsy" (Neo-Nazis) from the building council, gather executive authority and appeal Mr Putin for assistance against the "evil Nazis".

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In the calls he also states that the riots must look as if they were grassroots with local residents as the main actors despite the funding coming from Russia. The leaks also offer damning evidence against Glazyev on so called 2014 Odessa clashes, in which 46 pro-Russian...
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...and 2 pro-Ukrainian people died, and which pro-Russian propagandists like Aaron Maté have occasionally used as an evidence against "Ukrainian neo-Nazis". A call between State Duma member Konstantin Zatulin and Glazyev proved that Russia funded the riots both in ...

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...Kharkiv and in Odessa. They also talk about Crimea, complaining how some pro-Russian politicians didn't show up to a demonstration. Glazyev commented on the situation as follows: "Holy fuck. We fed them for so long". Glazyev also funded the Cossacks, a pro-Russian ...

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...militant group for partaking the riots in Crimea. Glazyev also talked about a "woman who will be buried soon." She had died during the riots, and he wanted to turn her funeral into a propaganda piece: "This has to all be done properly in the propaganda sense. So they...

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..will be heroes and so on. So that people would be there.This event is very important."In one of the phone calls,Glazyev also referred to a certain "Slava",extremely likely referring to Vladislav Surkov who developed the strategic plan for the annexation of Crimea & Donbas.18/24 Image
In another call between Glazyev and Zatulin, they plan to create a pro-Russian Automaidan - a motorized response to the Ukrainian Automaidan movement. For this, they asked "the Surgeon", the founder of the biker club "Night Wolves" for assistance. Sergey also calls ...

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.."the Surgeon" to help them with Zaporizhzhia:" The key city which needs support in Zaporizhzhia. Because without Zaporizhzhia,Crimea won’t survive, it’s not viable." Under Ukrainian control, Crimea got its energy and water from the mainland.

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So, there it is: the Russian plan to steal a large chunk of Ukraine to create a land bridge between Russia and Crimea, to capture Odessa, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, the Donbas... and all this revealed to us already back in 2016.

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The plan can of course be originated way back to the end of the 90's, when Alexander Dugin laid the plans in his 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics.

Recently Glazyev has become a prominent figure again, pushing for the BRICS collaboration and the abandonment of the USD.

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He's also commented on the collapse of the ruble, basically saying that the Central Bank of Russia knows what they're doing. But in regard to economic issues, how much trust should one put on a guy who was one of the leaders of the Russian "shock therapy" in the early...

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...1990s, leading to the total collapse of the country's economic system?

In Mar 2014, right after the Russian annexation of Crimea, Glazyev became one of the first people to be sanctioned by the US.

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

May 13
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.

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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.

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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.

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Read 22 tweets
May 9
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”.

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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.

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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.

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Read 24 tweets
May 6
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.

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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.

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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.
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Read 23 tweets
May 2
In today’s 350th Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American comedian and podcaster, Dave Smith (@ComicDaveSmith). He’s best-known for his numerous appearances on the Joe Rogan Experience and for his unhinged takes on the Russo-Ukrainian War.

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Smith has a massive megaphone - he’s a good friend of Joe Rogan, and he’s appeared on Joe’s podcast a whopping 16 times. Naturally, he’s also visited Lex Fridman’s podcast and frequently appears on Fox News’ Kennedy and The Greg Gutfeld Show.

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Dave is part of the Kremlintarian section of the Libertarian Party called Mises Caucus. They took control of the party in May 2022, and with the help of their new leader, Angela McArdle, turned it into an extension of the MAGA Republicans:

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Read 24 tweets
Apr 29
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Russian journalist, Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin). He’s best-known for posing as a Russian dissident, while at the same time sneakily promoting the Kremlin’s narratives about the Russo-Ukrainian War.

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On paper, Leonid doesn’t look like your typical Kremlin apologist - he’s written and worked for prestigious Western outlets like the BBC, the Guardian, and he’s even written some Lonely Planet guides for the Baltic countries!

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But Ragozin’s public commentary often seems to walk a fine line: condemning the war while pushing narratives that shift blame, dilute responsibility, or quietly carry the same old imperial baggage Russia - or its opposition - has never truly forgotten.

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Read 21 tweets
Apr 28
In today’s Vatnik Soup REBREW, I’ll introduce a bank that is well-known in both Austria and Russia: Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) and its Russian subsidiary, AO Raiffeisen. It is one of the few foreign banks that still does business in Russia.

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Raiffeisen’s Russian branch was founded in 1996 and expanded dramatically after the acquisition of Russia’s Impexbank in 2006. A year later, it was the largest bank trading in foreign capital (seventh in size) in Russia.

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In the early 2000s, Raiffeisen opened new branches in Russia, including in Saint Petersburg, Samara, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Krasnodar. After 2018, it focused on digital expansion and by 2021 it had a digital presence in more than 300 cities.

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Read 22 tweets

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