In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a Ukrainian-Canadian political scientist, Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski). He's best-known for exaggerating the role of far-right and neo-Nazi involvement in the Ukrainian politics and in the Russo-Ukrainian War.
1/22
Katchanovski received his PhD from the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.Even though his his h-index is measly 21, his academic record is pretty remarkable; among other feats,he's worked as a visiting researcher at the Davis Center for...
2/22
...Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.
Ivan is all about them "far-right elements" in Ukraine. His main narrative is that there is a small but powerful bloc of far-right actors who are integrated into the Ukrainian Army and are tolerated by President...
3/22
...Zelensky, and that they also played a crucial role in the so-called Maidan massacre. Per Ivan, "the Maidan massacre [...] was a successful false flag operation, which was organized and conducted with involvement of oligarchic and far right elements of the Maidan...
4/22
...opposition and snipers in order to overthrow the government and seize power in Ukraine."
After Oct 2014, he started presenting his theory on the events of the Maidan massacre. His 2015 paper argues that it was actually the snipers from the Maidan-controlled areas that...
5/22
...caused most of the fatalities. In his 2016 book chapter on nominally peer-reviewed Journal of Labor and Society, he again argued that "the Right Sector and Svoboda had crucial roles in [...] in the Maidan massacre of the protesters and the police."
6/22
Official investigation matched the used bullets to the weapons used by Berkut, the Ukrainian special police force working under Yanukovych. Researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University have refuted Ivan's claims by using a detailed reconstruction of the events from various..
In Feb 2023, Ivan gave an interview to an obscure journal called "Historical Expertise". The journal seems to focus on Russian history and culture, but it also contains a lot of pro-Kremlin propaganda in the form of interviews and articles. Anyway, the interview is titled..
9/22
"Not a single person is convicted or arrested for the Maidan massacre", and in it Katchanovski makes a rather bold statement that it was actually the involvement of Ukrainian far-right actors that led to the annexation of Crimea, "civil war" in Ukraine, and to the...
10/22
...Russian military intervention in Donbas. Apparently the Kremlin's military interference, their meddling with Yanukovych, their plans to make Ukraine into a Belarus-like totalitarian state, their funding of pro-Kremlin politicians had nothing to do with all this.
11/22
Academics need to be extremely careful in what they say,especially so when discussing over geopolitics. Ivan claims to be "neutral" and boasts that he usually doesn't give interviews to Russian media.
We know this from his before-mentioned interview on Russian media.
12/22
Recently, he has been criticizing the use of phrase "Slava Ukraini". He shared an article where Croatian President and fervent opponent of military aid to Ukraine, Zoran Milanović, compared the slogan to "Sieg Heil" used by the real Nazis.
13/22
The phrase first appeared at the beginning of the 20th century, and was later used by Ukrainians during the Ukrainian War of Independence between 1917 and 1921. Katchanovski has called this version of history "Wikipedia fakes propagated by whitewashers of OUN & far-right."
14/22
Remember when pro-Kremlin propagandists discovered that the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,Valerii Zaluzhnyi,wore a bracelet that had a symbol that resembled a swastika. This was of course just the evidence he needed to prove his "Ukrainian Nazis" theory.
15/22
In reality, the symbol was the Solomon's knot, an age-old symbol found already in ancient Roman mosaics. According to Ivan, these bracelets are "also used by neo-Nazis in Ukraine."
Man, it must be stressful to grasp at straws this hard to support your own theories.
16/22
On various occasions, Katchanovski has claimed that if Ukraine had only complied with the Minsk Agreement, the war could have been avoided. While it's true that Ukraine didn't comply with the agreement, but neither did Russia.
17/22
Incidentally, Ivan forgets to mention the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, which obligated Russia to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and its borders.
I think we can safely say at this point, that you can't trust Russia on any international agreement.
18/22
Lately Katchanovski has been involved with another pro-Kremlin megaphone, Jeffrey Sachs. As you may know, Sachs is blaming the NATO expansion on the war in Ukraine, undermined Finland's NATO membership, and appeared on Vladimir Solovyov's propaganda show.
19/22
He's also testified on the Nord Stream sabotage in front of the UN Security Council on behalf of Russia. In May 2023,Ivan & Jeffrey sat down for a talk,in which Katchanovski falsely claimed that the West sabotaged the peace negotiations between Ukraine & Russia in Mar 2022.
20/22
As it can be difficult to find funding for projects that don't support official investigations, Ivan has decided to crowdfund his research. He managed to raise 3000 CA$ for his latest article, which will be published in near future in a journal called "Russian Politics".
21/22
To me it seems like Ivan REALLY wants to be relevant. He likes to quote himself,boast about his media appearances & his academic achievements,and generally tries to be noticed.
As of now, he's mostly noticed and used by the pro-Kremlin media to support their propaganda.
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss the Wagner Group, its founders Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, and the mutiny they started on 23 Jun 2023. The event marked the climax of the Wagner Group–Russian MoD conflict, and finally led to the deaths of Prigozhin and Utkin.
1/22
Wagner has been used in many conflicts around the world, but they came to global prominence during the war in Donbas in 2014-2015. Wagnerites helped the Donbas separatists fight against the Ukrainians during the conflict, which helped Putin to “outsource” the insurrection.
2/22
The group doesn’t have any central ideology, but many of its members and leaders have ties to various neo—Nazi movements in Russia. For example, Wagner leader Dmitry Utkin had several Nazi symbols tattooed on his body. Neo—nazi group Rusich has also fights as part of Wagner.
3/22
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an Amsterdam-based propaganda channel, Bonanza Media (@bonanzamedia2). It’s best-known for producing & spreading online pro-Kremlin propaganda videos while closely coordinating & collaborating with the Russian intelligence agency GRU.
1/19
Russian intelligence has been extremely active in the Netherlands for a long time. For example in 2018, four GRU agents were caught while trying to hack into OPCW,an organization that monitors the use of chemical weapons. In addition, the International Criminal Court (ICC)…
2/19
…and the MH17 investigation have become targets for the Russian intelligence and propaganda operations. These operations are often complemented with “investigative journalism” media outlets, that often echo the Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation.
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll talk about the recent EU elections and what are their implications for both the Kremlin and Ukraine. Right-wing political parties, some pro-Kremlin, won a lot of seats around Europe, and this result can also change the EU’s stance on Ukraine.
1/19
But before we start, I want to promote a truck fundraiser I'm doing together with the fantastic @ArturRehi and @69thSB.
Our goal is 20 000 USD, and you can contribute to this important fundraiser here:
EU’s support of Ukraine is essential for their survival against genocidal Russia. So far,this support has been delayed mostly by Orban’s Hungary (& to some degree, Fico’s Slovakia). Now, this support will probably be challenged by many new members of the European Parliament.
3/19
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss a specific propaganda/disinformation that the Kremlin likes to use – antisemitism. I also talk about how the Russian society itself has become riddled with antisemitism & how this has led to a decrease in Jewish population in the country.
1/19
Russian antisemitism works on many levels, and their narratives vary depending whether they’re targeting a local audience or people in Europe and the US. For example for the latter, Russia attempts to create a false narrative of Ukraine being an antisemitic “Nazi state”.
2/19
But before diving deeper, let’s look at a survey data of Russians in 2023: Nearly 30 million Russians harbour antisemitic attitudes, and 15% of those surveyed believed that “Jews were responsible for most of the world’s wars.” 38% think that the Jews have...
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Ukrainian media personality and propagandist, Diana Panchenko (@Panchenko_X). She’s best-known for betraying her own country by peddling anti-Zelenskyy and anti-Ukraine propaganda and disinformation for the Kremlin.
1/22
Panchenko was born in 1988 in the Mykolaev Oblast in Ukrainian SSR in 1988. She studied publishing and editing at the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and later graduated from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv with a degree in law.
2/22
After graduating, Diana worked briefly for the news site . Between 2010 and 2015, Panchenko was a presenter for KyivTV, but she found her true calling as a pro-Kremlin propagandist after she was hired by a national “news channel” called NewsOne.