Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jun 29, 2023 26 tweets 18 min read Read on X
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a South African-American(!) businessman and social media figure, Elon Musk (@elonmusk). He's best-known for being the wealthiest man in the world, running Tesla Inc., SpaceX & Twitter, and for parroting Kremlin's propaganda narratives.

1/24
Let's start with the obvious: Elon's tweets have enormous effect on Twitter & his tweets have a big audience. Every tweet he likes or comments gets a huge boost in the algorithm & is then shown to tens of millions of people.Some have called his replies a "stamp of approval".
2/24

He's promised to make Twitter the "most accurate source of information about the world," but strangely he's flirted with various conspiracy theories throughout the years. Among other things, he's denied the white supremacist background of a mass shooter, spread COVID-19...

3/24





...misinformation and parroted George Soros related conspiracy theories. A lot of Elon's views on various topics may actually come from other people. His ex-wife, @TalulahRiley called for unbanning of @TheBabylonBee, his friend @joerogan had previously called for a social...
4/24



..media platform that works like a "marketplace of ideas" - a philosophy where the "best" ideas from the likes of alleged human trafficker/rapist @cobratate & QAnon-affiliated @RepMTG rise to the top - & said that Musk should "liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob".
5/24





When it comes to war,he seems to mostly listen to @davidsacks, among a few other disinformation peddlers. In Oct 2022, Musk tweeted about "Ukraine-Russia Peace", calling for UN-supervised elections in the annexed areas. He also stated that Crimea would remain part of Russia.
6/24

He then warned about escalation and the threat of nuclear war. A very similar peace plan was suggested by his "war room" buddy @davidsacks just week before Musk's tweet. He later backtracked, polling whether the people in Donbas & Crimea should "decide whether they want...
7/24

...to be part of Russia or Ukraine" - which they did already in 1991 as you can see from this Independence Referendum voting map.

In Jun 2023, @davidsacks blessed us with another long tweet, condemning the Ukrainian counteroffensive as a failure, while at the same time...
8/24

...praising Mearsheimer's realpolitik garbage. Musk commended his old friend's post, stating that it was "Well said."

Elon has also discredited @bellingcat, one of the biggest investigative groups fighting Russian disinformation, calling them a "psyop".

9/24





Bellingcat has exposed loads of Russian atrocities, including the down shooting of MH17, the identity of Russia's drone operators, and the Skripal poisonings.

For this, it has become number one target of defamation by the pro-Kremlin propagandists like @aaronjmate.

10/24



After Twitter introduced subscription service, one of Elon's first subscriptions on Twitter was @KanekoaTheGreat, a QAnon-affiliated conspiracy theorist known for pushing Kremlin narratives about Ukraine, especially about the country's ethnic "division".

11/24





He's also attended civil discussions on Twitter Spaces with pro-Kremlin propagandists like @KimDotcom and @stillgray. Incidentally, these Spaces rarely offer any real discussion, but are rather back-patting exercises of people who mostly agree with each other.

12/24



Musk has strongly promoted one of the biggest liars and Putin cheerleaders in the US media, Tucker Carlson. In the first episode of his new "show" on Twitter, Carlson implied that the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed by the Ukrainians without offering any solid proof.

13/24



These narratives are heavily promoted by Musk and his Twitter platform, promoting Russia's biggest adversaries as "psyops" and Ukraine as a corrupt nation ruled by far-right militias. As you know by now, they come directly from the Kremlin propaganda playbook.

14/24

Of course all this has been used for propaganda purposes by Russia, and these days Elon appears often on RT's headlines allegedly agreeing that the Ukrainian counterattack is failing and the 2014 Revolution of Dignity was a coup.

15/24



Elon has called himself a "politically moderate",but in 2022 clearly chose a side,saying that he could "no longer support" the Democrats due to their politics & encouraged people to vote Republicans in the midterms.DeSantis announced his run for presidency on Twitter Spaces.16/24



For some, Twitter has become more "free speech". But for others, not so much: On 13 Jun 2023, Musk-led Twitter suspended the Twitter account of Aaron Greenspan, a critic of both Tesla and Musk. His project, PlainSite, that shares court filings for free was also suspended.

17/24





Musk has removed plenty of barriers to slow down the spread of disinformation,including EU's voluntary Code of Practice against disinformation. At the same time, he's complied to censorship requests from Indian and Turkish ruling parties by removing and restricting content.
18/24



To conclude: Why is Musk pushing, among other things, the peace plan where Ukraine would lose a lot? My theory is that the war is bad for business. His businesses require a lot of raw materials, and both Russia & China are in the top 3 of the biggest raw material producers.
19/24
Tesla Inc.'s conflict mineral report from 2022 reveals that Russia (as well as China) is a country of origin for their gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten. Tesla has also been buying aluminum from Rusal since 2020. Rusal was founded by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and it...
20/24





...accounts for almost 9% of the world's aluminum output. He was sanctioned by the Trump administration in Apr 2018 for alleged illegal wiretapping, extortion and racketeering, and he also allegedly ordered a murder of a businessman. The sanctions were later watered down...
21/24

...Trump and co. as they would "disrupt the aluminum markets" and Deripaska intended to invest 200 million USD in a Kentucky aluminum mill, but this plan eventually failed.

But business is business, even when it comes from a Russian oligarch, and I'm sure Elon knows this.

22/24



It would probably be impossible or extremely expensive to produce cars, rockets and other technology without the raw materials from Russia or China, and the US sanctions imposed on the former have probably already made it more difficult.

23/24
Maybe Elon just doesn't want to bite the hand that feeds his companies?I'm sure his lobbying power in the US will keep his businesses going even after his "anti-establishment" hot takes,but we will probably never see him criticizing the likes of Russia, CCP or Saudi Arabia.
24/24

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youtube.com/@TheSoupCentral
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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Mar 20
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an Estonian businessman turned far-right politician and conspiracy theorist, Harry Raudvere. Raudvere is best-known for his neo-Nazi and pro-Kremlin politics, for his lingerie businesses, and for spreading anti-Estonia propaganda.

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Raudvere started building a business empire in the 2000s, and a lot of his wealth comes from wind farms in Ida-Virumaa in Estonia. His family also owns a lingerie business, BonBon Lingerie. As tacky lingerie is popular in Russia, they were very active there before the war.

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Raudvere promotes ideas that strongly resemble Russian propaganda talking points, and has no problem in undermining Estonia’s support for Ukraine. But at the same time, he is strongly aligned with far-right nationalist movements.

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Read 18 tweets
Mar 19
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll continue the “Degenerate Russia” series. In it, we look behind the Kremlin propaganda and see the real Russia – an authoritarian country that doesn’t care about its people and desperately tries to hold on to its imperialistic past.

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The Kremlin loves to brand Russia as the last defender of “traditional values” against the “decadent” West. But in reality, Russia is plagued by crime, violence, corruption, and even neo-Nazi groups. Let’s break down the hypocrisy.

First part:

2/18

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Russia has one of the highest divorce rates in the world. In 2021, it had a divorce rate of 4,3 per 1000 people, among the highest globally. While Putin criticizes Western liberalism, over 60% of Russian marriages end in divorce. So much for being a “family values” society.

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Read 19 tweets
Mar 18
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll start a new series titled “Degenerate Russia”. In it, we look behind the Kremlin propaganda and see the real Russia – an authoritarian country that doesn’t care about its people and desperately tries to hold on to its imperialistic past.

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In this first soup, we’ll examine religious persecution in Russia and Ukraine, how the KGB/FSB has used religion as a tool of espionage and propaganda, and how Russia is erasing Ukrainian culture by destroying the country’s churches.

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Russia claims to be the last bastion of Christian tradition, but its history tells a different story. For decades, it has persecuted religious groups, tortured, imprisoned and murdered clergymen, bombed churches, and used the Orthodox Church as a state tool.

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Read 23 tweets
Mar 17
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Russian propagandist, Xenia Fedorova (@xfedorova). She’s best known for running Russia’s state propaganda media in France, and then writing a whole book to whine about how it got shut down by the EU after Russia invaded Europe.

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Xenia was born in 1980 in Kazan, Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, now Russia. She got an Executive MBA from the Berlin School of Creative Leadership in 2014, and did her whole career (since December 2005) at the Russian state propaganda outlet, RT.

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RT (previously “Russia Today”), established by Putin in June 2005, is active all around the world to spread vatnik narratives. Together with Sputnik, it is the main foreign propaganda outlet for Russian bullshit. Both outlets are led by the master vatnik Margarita Simonyan.

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Read 17 tweets
Mar 14
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Serbian academic, Ratko Ristić. He’s best known for engaging in pro-Kremlin, ultranationalist politics and propaganda while undermining business ties between Serbia and the EU.

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Serbia, along with Belarus, remains Russia’s staunchest European ally amid its aggression against Ukraine. Not only have they refused to impose sanctions, but Serbia has also become a regional disinformation hub, destabilizing the wider region.

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Beyond foreign malign influence, Serbia’s nationalist-revisionist regime – rooted in the 1990s – has aligned with Russia’s aggressive, anti-liberal nationalist bloc. Serbian far-right groups are also well-known supporters of Russian imperialism.

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Read 20 tweets
Mar 8
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce Oleg Bessedin, a videoblogger and Russia’s favorite mouthpiece in Estonia. Through social media, online groups, and media networks, Bessedin has played an active role in pushing pro-Kremlin narratives to divide Estonian society.

1/13 Image
Oleg is a content creator and businessman with strong ties to pro-Kremlin networks. He runs multiple Facebook groups and media platforms that regularly share Russian state propaganda. Estonia’s Internal Security Service (KAPO) has flagged his platforms as disinfo hubs.

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Bessedin presents himself as an independent journalist, but his content is heavily biased in favor of Russian narratives. He portrays Estonia and the West as corrupt, aggressive, and anti-Russian while defending Russia’s actions on the world stage.

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Read 14 tweets

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