In today's #vatniksoup,I'll introduce a Russian diplomat, SVR officer & First Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN, Dmitry Alekseevich Polyanskiy (@Dpol_un). He's best-known for promoting Western,pro-Kremlin fake news blogs & individuals like @TheGrayzoneNews.
1/22
Dima was previously stationed in Warsaw, from where he then moved on to work in New York to work under Vasily Nebenzya, the current Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations, and the man who had to announce the infamous "Ukrainian combat mosquitos".
2/22
Now, before we move on, it's worth mentioning that Dima is actually an officer of SVR, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service.He comes from the so-called PR or Public Relations line, so he's not exactly the James Bond of the agency, but he still has a lot of influence & power.3/22
Now, there's nothing new at using agents as diplomats, and Russia has utilized this strategy since the days of the KGB. For example,in Finland 1/3 of Russian embassy staff in Helsinki were intelligence agents & a lot of them were expelled recently from the Nordic countries.
4/22
He's relatively happily married (we'll get to that later), and his daughter, Anastasiya, was married to a Georgian man. Now, Dima absolutely despises Georgians. Which is why he was extremely happy when his daughter and her Georgian husband decided to file for a divorce.
5/22
So, Dima (allegedly) lives a happy life in Manhattan, New York, and apparently enjoys his life in the biggest NATO country out there, eating at the fanciest restaurants. At the same time, he's constantly trashing the oh-so decadent West.
Hypocrisy much?
6/22
Often tweeting against the "decadent West", it seems that Dima has also been corrupted by it - he's had intimate, extramarital relations with Lenka Houskova White AKA @whitelenka, a former Sputnik journalist and model from the Czech Republic.
7/22
Unfortunately, Dima and Lenka recently split up and he now has a new mistress from the office where he works at. They still like and comment on each other's tweets, though, which is kinda cute!
We couldn't reach out to Dmitry's wife, Maria, for a comment on the matter.
8/22
Polyanskiy seems to have his tentacles everywhere in the Western vatnik space. His favorite outlet seems to be the Grayzone blog, and he's appeared with the GZ boys @MaxBlumenthal and @aaronjmate on few occasions. Here he is denying any invasion before the war started.
9/22
He's also appeared on Hinkle's "The Dive", @ReadeAlexandra's podcast, and even allegedly talked with Sarah "Donbass Devushka" Bils. She's a pathogical liar, though, and everything she says should be taken with skepticism.
10/22
I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually Dima who invited both Max and Aaron to speak at the United Nations Security Council on behalf of Russia. Actually, I'm gonna take this a step further - I wouldn't be surprised if Dima was the handler of these two and Hinkle.
11/22
In general, Russia has turned United Nations' Security Council into a circus, inviting pro-Kremlin grifters like Blumenthal and Maté to spread the Russian lies. Hell, they even invited Ray McGovern who spent his 15 minutes of fame speaking German and singing peace songs.
12/22
Considering how much The Grayzone boys, Hinkle and Ritter hate the "deep state" and the Western version of the three letter agencies, they seem to have no problem in interacting with their Russian counterparts like the SVR.
13/22
I guess we can also take a look at Dmitry's tweets and appearances, but the content is pretty much what you'd expect: "Ukrainian Nazis", "8 years of shelling in Donbas", the corrupt and hypocritical West, Holodomor denial, mainstream media cannot be trusted, yada yada...
14/22
Initially, Polyanskiy was certain that Russia wasn't going to attack and blamed the West for propaganda. Of course, this story has since changed from "Russia won't invade Ukraine" to "NATO forced us to invade" now that Putin's genocidal war in Ukraine is evident.
15/22
Ironically, Dima's profile states that he "rejects hatespeech, lies and fake news," but that's pretty much the only thing you can find on his feed. He's shared content from "citizen journalists" and "analysts" like Hinkle, @MyLordBebo, @GonzaloLira1968 and @narrative_hole.
16/22
Many of the people Dima follows have been featured on #vatniksoup previously: Sonja van den Ende, Kim Dotcom, David Sacks, Richard Z AKA Trollstoy88, Nina Byzantina, Wyatt Reed... The whole thing is just absurd, considering he's a high-rank UN official.
17/22
Dmitry loves talking about the "Ukrainian Nazis", often citing "journalists" like Maté and Johnny Miller. Of course he knows that the "neo-Nazi problem" in Ukraine is mostly fabricated, and it's actually Russia that has a problem with Nazis:
If we disregard the absurdity of the "de-nazification" conducted by actual Nazis, maybe Dima can answer this question: Why were the Azov leaders exchanged for corrupt Ukrainian oligarch, Viktor Medvedchuk, during a prisoner exchange?
19/22
It's almost like it was never about the "de-nazification" rather than about putting Putin's friends into power in Ukraine. Of course, most of us knew that already, which is why the whole "Ukrainian Nazis" narrative is being ridiculed all over social media.
20/22
On 14 Jul 2023, Dima appeared on "Maverick News" together with elite war analyst and convicted sex criminal, Scott Ritter. The discussion revolved around "NATO expansion", "money laundering" in Ukraine, evil "Ukrainian Nazis" and how Zelensky "let down the Ukrainians".
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To conclude: Polyanskiy is an SVR officer who keeps close contact with many of the Western vatniks, probably even collaborating and coordinating together with them.
This soup was brewed together with the fellas known as the Unintelligence Agency.
In this 5th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss something that sounds great in theory, but was completely turned upside-down by the tankie kind of vatnik: anti-imperialism. More consistent anti-imperialists call this the “anti-imperialism of idiots”. 1/5
“Anti-imperialism” was popularized by Lenin, who saw imperialism as the ultimate stage of capitalism. Ironically, the largest empire is now… Putin’s Russia, proud heir to both Lenin’s Soviet Union and to the Tsarist Empire. 2/5
Indeed, Russia is an empire that is still ruled by a de facto all-powerful Tsar, that still proudly flies its imperial flag, that still dreams of expanding its already huge territory through brutal conquest and colonization. 3/5
In this 4th Debunk of the Day, we’ll refute an absolute classic of vatnik BS, the crown jewel of peak dishonesty: whataboutism.
Now, not everything that looks like whataboutism is wrong. Seeking consistency or comparing actions or responses is normal. 1/5
But when someone pulls some completely unrelated event, that happened to completely different people, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, you know what you’re dealing with: a crass denial of the problem at hand, a bad-faith attempt to derail the topic. 2/5
Logic or chronology plays no role here, nor your opinion on these other topics. You could be the staunchest critic or supporter of these other actions thrown into the discussion, it doesn’t matter. It is irrelevant whether these other things are true or not, or bad or not. 3/5
In this 3rd Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about… “ending” the war by surrendering or ceding territory.
Nearing four years of the 2-day “special military operation”, Russia is desperate to obtain through other means what they failed to conquer on the battlefield. 1/5
An endless army of vatniks therefore tries to demoralize both Ukrainians and supporters.
They sound noble: “anti-war” or concerned about the fate of Ukraine’s civilians, soldiers and cities. They claim that if we just stop fighting or helping, this horror would magically end. 2/5
What they never mention is… WHO started the war, WHO murders Ukrainians, WHO destroys Ukrainian cities: the same monsters they suggest Ukrainians be at the mercy of. Surrendering wouldn’t end the atrocities of the occupation, it would enable them. Surrendering wouldn’t even…3/5
In today’s Debunk of the Day (2), we’ll look at… nuclear blackmail. Vatniks love using Russia’s nuclear threats as a reason for surrendering or for not lifting a finger to help Ukraine: “see, they have nukes, we have to give them whatever they want”.
The argument is absurd: 1/5
Nuclear deterrence has been a reality for decades. Both the US and Russia have lost wars without resorting to nukes. We are not submitting to the whims of Pakistan or North Korea either. For vatniks, it’s just an insidious way of siding with Putin. 2/5
We can’t just give in to the Kremlin’s nuclear blackmail, to the threats their officials and propagandists make five times a day to scare us into letting them have something they know perfectly well is not theirs, with no limit to their appetite. 3/5 vatniksoup.com/en/nuclear-thr…
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce a Ukrainian “scholar” and social media activist, Marta Havryshko (@HavryshkoMarta). She’s best known for spreading anti-Ukraine and pro-Kremlin narratives online, along with a habit of spotting neo-Nazis everywhere in Ukraine.
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Marta hails from Ukraine, where she studied history at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. She received her PhD in history in 2010. Her academic work focused on gender-based violence and wartime atrocities, including publications on sexual crimes in occupied Ukraine.
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She is currently working as a visiting Assistant Professor at the Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Clark University in the US. According to the center’s website, Marta teaches courses on antisemitism, racism, and gender-based violence in armed conflicts.
In today’s (first) Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about… “realistic expectations”.
Russia has the GDP of Italy. NATO — which Russia claims to be fighting — has 20 times their GDP, and a much stronger and more modern military. 1/5
Russia’s full scale invasion was supposed to take 2 days, but we’re nearing 4 years. They’ve lost a million men. Their economy is in shambles.
And yet we're letting them set their red lines instead of massive sanctions, strong support for Ukraine, and an immediate sky shield. 2/5
Russia thought their war was “realistic” because we’d let them get away with it. It wouldn’t be “realistic” to invade a European nation and redraw borders by force if the West had a strong and united response.
What’s “realistic” is what public opinion tolerates and accepts. 3/5