In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American pro-Russian propagandist, Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13). He's best-known for his work for Sputnik, and for parroting the classic Kremlin narratives such as "Ukrainian Nazis", "genocide in Donbas" & the "corrupted Kiev regime".
1/19
Like with so many Kremlin propagandists, Wyatt's motivation stems from his deep hatred for American imperialism, and as is tradition, Reed's praised "public intellectuals" like Noam Chomsky and John Pilger.
2/19
Reed was also an author at the fake news blog, @TheGrayzoneNews, where he co-authored articles with Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton on Bolivia's political crisis in 2019. He hasn't published anything there after 2020, perhaps due to his contract with Sputnik.
3/19
Wyatt has called himself an "impartial analyst", but naturally he's nothing but a paid mouthpiece for the Kremlin. He's worked for the Russian-state controlled Sputnik for several years.
4/19
Reed's heavily involved in the circle jerk of pro-Kremlin propagandists who for some reason call themselves journalists. He's been interviewed by Katie Halper & Aaron Maté (@UsefulIdiotpod), Gonzalo Lira (@GonzaloLira1968), Liubov Sivaya (@liusivaya), ...
5/19
Tara "Joe Biden raped me" Reade (@ReadeAlexandra), Lee Camp from RT (@LeeCamp), and of course by our own favorite "poor woman from Lugansk", Donbass Devushka.
6/19
Wyatt's propagand relies heavily on the "genocide in Donbas" narrative. He's often reported from Donetsk, claiming that the "Ukrainian Nazis" are bombing civilian targets. Apparently for Wyatt the definition of a Nazi is "anyone who supports Ukraine".
7/19
Between Mar and Apr 2022, Reed was constantly tweeting about Mariupol. He tweeted about the "Azov base" with "copious quantities of nazi paraphernalia", like the hat with the coat Nazi Germany Coat and Arms and SS Totenkopf logo that the Russians planted there.
8/19
He's also shared several propaganda videos of crisis actors blaming the Azov for using them as human shields & forcing them to stay in the city.For some weird reason he did not tweet about the Mariupol theater or the maternity hospital bombings conducted by Russia.
9/19
After Bucha, Reed attempted to muddy the waters with Ukrainian war crimes. He also referred to the event as "so-called Bucha massacre", and stating how the Western media is silent on the "clearing operation", referring to the eradication of Russian forces in the area.
10/19
He was an "international observer" at the sham referendum in Sep 2022 in Sevastopol, Ukraine. "Everything I've seen so far has been very transparent, very open," he commented to TASS when asked about the situation at the polling station.
11/19
In Oct 2022, Wyatt was all about that cold, gasless, European winter. He stated that "It's gonna be a long winter", and fantasized about Europeans huddling over a burning barrel and slowly roasting a rat carcass.
12/19
In the end of Feb 2023, Reed was tweeting how "50,000 Germans came out [...] to call for peace and demand their government "stop the escalation of arms deliveries" to Ukraine". He just forgot to mention that these events were also orchestrated by the Kremlin.
13/19
In his promo video for an "antiwar gathering", Reed accuses Ukraine of Russia's strategy of "double-tapping" (i.e. bombing twice) civilian targets.
In the same video he claimed that the whole war is waged because US needs to launder money to the "elite".
14/19
Wyatt also likes to spice things up with historical revisionism. His claims that it was the Soviets who stopped the Nazis incidentally forgets to mention the military aid and involvement of the US, and the breakthroughs made from UK intel.
15/19
He also forgot to mention that it was actually the Poles, Belorussians and the Ukrainians who lost the largest percentage of population.
16/19
Wyatt is just another "independent journalist" who hails from the "far-left" - he parrots all the Kremlin-supported talking points, and in interviews and podcasts he speaks about his brief visit in Ukraine.
17/19
Now that Russia is doing nothing but losing, he's making subpar propaganda on pretty much anything, including a "sexualized image of the Hindu goddess Kali".
18/19
Oh, and as is tradition: Wyatt claims that the Uyghur genocide is "totally made up" and "CIA propaganda".
All these "journalists" are just predictable carbon copies of each other, toeing the line of totalitarian regimes around the world.
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll talk about the Trump 2016 presidential campaign, and how it was connected to various Russian actors.
In this retrospect, I'll introduce some of the people who worked in Trump's 2016 campaign for the presidency, outlining their activities.
1/23
After becoming the president of his father's real estate ventures in early 70s, he started expanding its operations aggressively by building hotels, casinos and whatnot. Trump's businesses have been involved in over 4000 legal actions & he's filed for bankruptcy six times.
2/23
While studying in college during the Vietnam War era, Trump deferred draft four times. After his graduation, he was diagnosed with bone spurs, thus avoiding going to the war. This diagnosis was allegedly made by a podiatrist, Dr. Larry Braunstein, who rented his office from..3/23
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll be talking about the Russian style of online propaganda and disinformation, "Firehose of Falsehood". It's a commonly used Kremlin strategy for Russian information operations, which often prioritizes quantity over quality.
1/23
I have mentioned this particular strategy in many of my previous soups, but have never discussed it in more detail, so here goes. The term was originally coined by Paul & Matthews in their 2016 paper, The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model.
2/23
They based this name on two distinctive features: 1) high volume, multi-channel approach, and 2) shameless willingness to spread disinformation.
Academic Giorgio Bertolin described Russian disinformation as entertaining, confusing and overwhelming.
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American political commentator and pro-Kremlin propagandist, Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson). He's best-known for his outrageous lies and for his pro-Putin, anti-Ukrainian views while working for Fox News.
1/23
Ironically, Carlson started his career as a fact-checker for the conservative journal, Policy Review. He also applied to work for the CIA, but was denied, after which he started pursuing career in journalism. Tucker has worked for pretty much every big network in the US.
2/23
He worked for the CNN between 2000 and 2005, for PBS between 2004 and 2005, for MSNBC between 2005-2008, finally moving to Fox News in 2009. n 2016, Carlson started hosting Tucker Carlson tonight, which soon became the network's most watched TV show in its time slot.
...himself, was never even made. Naturally, according to Sachs, the Revolution of Dignity and the outing of Yanukovych were also planned by the US. Jeffrey has also said that "the Minsk Agreements failed when Ukraine’s leaders decided not to honor the agreements", ...
And if you want to talk about political agreements, why didn't Russia honour the Budapest Memorandum of 1994?
10/18
And again, if the verbal "security guarantees" made to Gorbachev were supposed to be honored, why did Putin invade Crimea in 2014 even though in 2008 he said that it's part of Ukraine? Makes you wonder.
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American economist and academic and political commentator, Jeffrey Sachs (@JeffreyASachs). He's best-known for his deep hate for the "US hegemony", and for his love for the totalitarian regimes in Russia, China and in Syria.
1/18
Sachs studied economics at Harvard and is currently working as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and as the President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
2/18
He's advised various countries on economic policy, including Bolivia, United Arab Emirates and several post-communist economies, often advising with transition from Marxism-Leninism to market economies.
In today's #vatniksoup I'm going to talk about the "antiwar movement". After Putin organized the fake referendums in the four Ukrainian Oblasts,various pro-Kremlin parties started calling for immediate peace in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, the movement was planned by the Kremlin.1/18
In Sep 2022, Russia organized referendums to join Ukrainian Oblasts of Kherson,Zaporizhzhia,Donetsk & Luhansk to the Russian Federation.The whole scenario was absurd - everyone knew that the referendums were totally fake & Russia didn't even control any of these areas fully.
2/18
And suddenly, hundreds of vatnik voices around the world started touting one thing, and one thing only: peace.