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Grok Profile picture
@grok
May 14, 2023 • 22 tweets • 13 min read • Read on X
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In today's #vatniksoup and in the second edition of "Where are they now?", I'll do an update on some of your favorite vatniks around the world & report on what they've been up to.

If there's someone or something you'd like to hear more about, let me know in the comments👇

1/21 Image
Let's start with some revelations regarding Russia's hybrid warfare operations in the West. The recent collaboration between Nordic public broadcasting companies revealed that the Russians have been focusing their espionage efforts around critical infrastructure in the...

2/21 Image
...Nordic countries. These include wind farms, oil platforms, and undersea cables.

Watch The Shadow War with English subtitles here:

3/21
The Danish journalists, including @kevinshakir and @LisbethQuass, have also exposed a plan where Russian intelligence services organize false anti-Erdogan protests to sow discord between Turkey and EU countries, and to prevent Sweden's NATO membership.

4/21 Image
This was inspired Rasmus Paludan's Quran-burning incident back in Jan 2023, and Russia was able to coordinate at least one anti-Erdogan demonstration in France in Mar 2023. Incidentally, one demonstration was also organized in Finland in early Mar 2023, ...

5/21 Image
...but it is unclear if it had any external coordination. The event was broadcasted by @HuuhtanenPanu, a Finnish vatnik who is allegedly about to sue me for... something.

Find Kevin Shakir's report here:

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As we can see, the Russian fifth column is still strong in Europe. In one incident on 9 May 2023, four Russian women attacked a Ukrainian woman for carrying the Ukrainian flag.

Check my thread on the fifth column:

7/21
But let's move on to vatniks, and I'm sure you recognize this one: Scott Ritter has been extremely busy in his new favorite country, Russia. His book "Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union" was recently published in...

8/21 ImageImageImageImage
..Russian by Moskovskaya Pravda, and naturally Scotty went to Russia to do a book tour. 5 May 2023, he told his audience in a bookstore in St. Petersburg that "There’s no way Russia should lose this war" and that...

9/21
..."If Russia wants to win this war, there is no reason why the war wouldn’t be over by late summer or early fall".

Check my thread on Scotty:

10/21
While Ritter was praising Russia and its mighty army in St. Petersburg, Gonzalo Lira was arrested by the SBU. There's wild rumors going around that his location was provided to the SBU by no other than our favorite "poor girl from Luhansk", Sarah "Donbass Devushka" Bils.

11/21
Some pro-Kremlin propagandists had warned Gonzalo about Bils, but apparently he didn't listen.

Here's more on Gonzalo:

Here's something about the "poor girl from Luhansk":

12/21 Image
In other news, it appears that Russians are still enjoying NATO countries and European luxuries en masse - in my earlier soups I introduced Russia's Deputy Minister of Defense in Russia, Timur Ivanov, and his wife Svetlana.

13/21 Image
Svetlana LOVES to party in Europe, and he was spotted having fun in Courchevel, France in early Apr 2023.

Check my thread on her:

14/21
But she isn't the only one enjoying the luxurious European capitals. Boris Obnosov, a man who is responsible Russia's missile production, has sent his family to live in Prague, where they own a beautiful 140m2 penthouse.

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In addition, they own several apartments around the city, and recently transferred their luxurious cars to Czech license plates. These people sure do seem to love NATO countries!
Here's a great thread on Boris Obnosov and his family:

16/21 Image
Conspiracy theorist and Putin-enjoyer Michael Flynn has also been busy. As is tradition in the US, he's sued @jimstewartson for the claims that he's part of QAnon, and the DOJ, FBI and US government for malicious prosecution and abuse of process.

17/21 ImageImage
Previously, his brother sued CNN for 75 million USD over QAnon reports. BTW, Flynn is apparently still collecting a full military pension, paid for by the US citizens, and at the same time tours America with their The Great ReAwakening VS The Great Reset event.

18/21
Check what I previously wrote on Flynn:

19/21 ImageImage
On 29 Apr 2023, the Russians organized a hybrid event called "Global Conference on Multipolarity", a propaganda conference which is basically who's who of pro-Kremlin academics.

20/21 Image
The event included speakers such as Sergei Lavrov, Sergei Glazyev, Konstantin Malofeyev, Pepe Escobar, Roger Köppel and Johan Bäckman.

Glazyev:
Malofeyev:
Köppel:
Bäckman:

21/21
Support my work: buymeacoffee.com/PKallioniemi

Past soups: vatniksoup.com

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More from @grok

Grok Profile picture
May 1
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 Hasan Piker in Havana, Cuba
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.

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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.

3/20

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Read 21 tweets
Grok Profile picture
Apr 26
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.Image
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.
Read 4 tweets
Grok Profile picture
Apr 13
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 Image
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 Yanis Varoufakis: How I became an erratic Marxist https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/feb/18/yanis-varoufakis-how-i-became-an-erratic-marxist
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.

3/20 Greek PM Alexis Tsipras appoints radical economist to new government https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/27/greek-pm-alexis-tsipras-economist-yanis-varoufakis
Read 20 tweets
Grok Profile picture
Mar 29
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 A flight of French and Polish Rafale and F-16 fighter jets above a NATO flag during the opening of the exhibition “Powerful because we are united”, dedicated to the 19th anniversary of Lithuania’s 2004 accession to NATO (OTD 22 years ago), in the bastion of the Vilnius defensive wall on March 29, 2023 (OTD 3 years ago) in Vilnius, Lithuania. (Photo by Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)
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 Trump aides struggle with how to spend $500 billion more on military, Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/02/21/trump-hegseth-budget-military/
Trump calls for US military spending to rise more than 50% to $1.5tn https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy59kxl2xwzo
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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.

3/7 Newsweek falsely claiming that the US pays 68% of NATO’s budget. The real number is 15%.

Elon Musk falsely claiming that the US pays for 2/3 of European defense. In another post he claimed it was 1/4. Both made-up numbers. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1870903805845598428 https://x.com/i/birdwatch/t/1870903805845598428
NATO has annual budgets and programs worth around EUR 4.6 billion in 2025 (representing 0.3% of total Allied defence spending), and up to EUR 5.3 billion in 2026. The US share for 2026-2027 is 15% of that: 0.8 billion. Source: Funding NATO https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/introduction-to-nato/funding-nato
Read 7 tweets
Grok Profile picture
Mar 9
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 Image
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:

2/20
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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.

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Read 20 tweets
Grok Profile picture
Mar 2
In this second (and possibly last) Basiji Soup, we’ll explore how the Islamic Republic of Iran has prepared for a conflict with the US and Israel. We won’t cover the military aspects, but another kind of war — information warfare.

1/20 Image
In the 1st Basiji Soup, we souped the Islamic Republic, its disinformation operations, its hypocrisy, its support of terrorism including Russia’s, its (one-sided?) relationship with Putin, and the mass protests against it that started two months ago:

2/20
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The Internet blackout has been crucial in allowing the regime to cover up its massacre of the protesters and especially the scope of it, making it difficult to assess the number of victims. They went to great lengths to jam Starlink, after having made its use illegal.

3/20 Image
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Read 20 tweets

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