In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an international pro-Kremlin network called DD Geopolitics (DDG; @DD_Geopolitics). They're best-known for spreading Russian propaganda and disinformation, and for collecting and donating money to Russian outlets like Rybar and Killnet.
1/22
When discussing about Donbass Devushka/DD Geopolitics, the focus has been solely on its founder and owner, Sarah Bils. But as she has stated, it's actually a bigger group of people from around the world, and today's soup will introduce some of them.
2/22
In case you need to catch up on Donbass Devushka/DDG, read this article:
DDG is basically just a re-hash of the Donbass Devushka brand with some admin changes (for example, @squatsons is no longer part of the group).
This research spans over 8 months of work by The Unintelligence Agency using open data sources. All people introduced in these soups had administrator privileges on the DDG Telegram channel.
4/22
As of today, DDG has over 120 000 followers on X/Twitter, and even with artificial inflation it's one of the largest English-speaking, pro-Kremlin social media networks online. Recently, the account was shadowbanned, probably due to the inorganic growth via troll farms.
5/22
The group's Telegram chat is extremely intolerant and pro-Russian, and the discussions range from fantasizing about killing Ukrainians and criticizing the "woke culture" to calling for genocide in Ukraine.
Pretty much the only topic that's shunned is supporting Ukraine.
6/22
At least in the past, the group has strongly supported the notorious PMC Wagner. Back in Spring 2023, the channel's logo featured the Wagner logo and sledgehammer, and DDG members have often discussed about how to actually join the group.
7/22
The group has promoted donations to West-sanctioned DPR & LPR, and the Kremlin-connected neo-Nazi Rusich Group. DDG has also allegedly sent money to pro-Russian hacker group Killnet,that has conducted cyberattacks on several Western countries due to their support of Ukraine.
8/22
DDG is part of the larger "vatniksphere" who often collaborate on various projects. Recently, they've been coordinating a pitiful coup d'état attempts in Ghana together with Simeon Boikov (@aussiecossack), who's best-known for attacking pensioners and coercing his grandma.
9/22
But as was mentioned earlier, DDG is not just a one person (even though Bils sometimes claims otherwise), so let's take a look at some of the administrators of the DDG Telegram group.
10/22
David E AKA david - The son of a German Die Linke politician who has deep hatred for Ukraine and its people. He is a big Wagner fanboy, collects their patches and allegedly even helped have foreign volunteers tracked down and killed in Ukraine.
11/22
On 18 Sep 2023, Die Welt published an article on David and his activities:
His anti-Ukrainian rhetoric reminds me of the so-called "4chan lingo" with a genocidal twist. When interviewed by @KatjaBody, he claimed to be "regretting" his...
...radicalization and stated that he had left the group back in Apr 2023, but in reality he was still wishing for the death of Ukrainians and even participating on a Telegram channel that focuses on doxxing anyone who helps Ukraine and Ukrainians.
13/22
Matt M AKA akhMATT sila - US citizen LARPing as a survivalist. Constantly calls for domestic political violence while stocking up on guns, armor and ammo. Prays for the end of society so that he can "kill whoever to take what I want." At some point wanted to join Wagner.
14/22
Matt was often grooming the younger members, including David, to more radical thinking and lifestyle. He also likes to collect pro-Russia and Wagner patches and constantly calls for murder of Ukrainian civilians. He often dreams of the collapse of the US society.
15/22
Here's some additional messages from the DDG chat from Matt:
16/22
Kristopher Karl Barrett - Barrett, a Wyoming resident, participates in the chat under his real name. He describes himself as "firearms and aviation enthusiast" as well as "pro-Russian". He also dreams of a total collapse and civil war, and for being a 62-year-old...
17/22
...he writes like an edgy teenager. At one point, he tried running for public office, but failed miserably. According to the man himself, he's involved in the American Village Project in Russia,...
18/22
...which attempts to relocate American fascists, far-right extremists and white nationalists to live in a village in Russia.
I'm not an expert on The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), but this really stinks like one.
19/22
Justin F AKA Konstantin - A Canadian who actually moved to Russia a long time ago and got married there, unlike so many other Kremlin fans. He cheers for the made-up republics of DPR and LPR, often refers to Ukrainians as Nazis, and refuses to call Ukraine a real country.
20/22
Joe J AKA @rocknrollAL. He's one of the original founders of the group and is partly responsible for the group's merch designs. He's currently one of the main admins on DDG's chat. Many of the Z-merch designs you might've seen probably came from Joey.
He also loves yoga.
21/22
In the next #vatniksoup, I'll introduce more of the DDG admins from countries like Slovenia, Russia (most live outside of Russia, of course), Romania, UK, France and Mexico. I'll also talk about how the group's connected to the rest of the "vatniksphere".
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American far-right social media personality, Nicholas J. Fuentes (@NickJFuentes). He’s best-known for his white supremacist, misogynistic and antisemitic rhetoric, and for being the poster boy for the so-called incel movement.
1/17
Like so many from the white supremacist movement, Fuentes dropped out of university after his freshman year. He studied introductory international relations, which apparently made him a geopolitics expert. Nick was introduced to the white supremacist movement at an…
2/17
..early age - he took part in the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,Virginia. In 2017, Fuentes launched his political talk show “America First”. Initially the show was aired on Trump-aligned Right Side Broadcasting Network, but it was dropped after the rally.
3/17
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss foreign malign influence operations during the 2024 US elections. As in 2016 and 2020, these recent elections were also a target of massive disinformation and hacking campaigns originating mostly from Russia and Iran.
1/17
First of all, my opinion is that these influence operations alone didn’t affect the elections so much, that they actually made a difference.
Unlike in 2016, Trump’s win over Harris was clear and these short-term campaigns didn’t really change that much this time.
2/17
Yet, many of these online campaigns attacked both Harris and Walz on various social media platforms. Especially Walz became a big target after his nomination, and many Russian efforts attempted to defame him.
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a social media personality and TV presenter, Raisa Blommestijn (@rblommestijn). She’s best-known for her far-right rhetorics, spreading conspiracy theories, and spreading anti-Ukraine and pro-Kremlin narratives on Dutch television.
1/24
Raisa studied philosophy of law at Leiden University. The faculty is best-known for one of its professors, Paul Cliteur. He’s a member of the pro-Kremlin party Forum voor Democratie (FvD), where he is one of the leading figures.Cliteur is also known for supervising the FvD…
2/24
…founder Thierry Baudet’s doctoral thesis, and can be considered a central figure in this Dutch “anti-establishment” movement. While studying at Leiden, Raise also met her best friend forever, Eva Vlaardingerbroek:
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American podcaster, Darryl Cooper (@martyrmade). He’s best-known for “Martyr Made”, a history podcast that provides a strongly revisionist and biased analysis on historical events such as the Revolution of Dignity and World War II.
1/22
Darryl became known to big audiences in 2021, when he published a Twitter thread in which he basically described a massive conspiracy against Trump during both 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. The culprits were predictable: the corporate press, intelligence agencies…
2/22
…and of course the evil Democrats. To Darryl, Russia was not working together with the Trump campaign, even though there’s clear evidence that many of his officials - including Carter Page, Rex Tillerson, Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort - interacted intimately with…
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’m going to outline the current situation in the West’s information war against Russia & its allies. Currently,the West’s counter-disinformation measures are severely underfunded,making it difficult to combat Russian influence operations effectively.
1/17
Europe today is repeating the same mistake in information warfare that it made in conventional warfare: we are not dedicating enough resources to counter it. Just as Europe was unprepared to fully support Ukraine and prepare for kinetic warfare against Russia,...
2/17
...we have been neglecting information warfare. Next year, Russia is reportedly set to spend around 3 billion USD on its information operations domestically and abroad, with allies like the CCP, Iran, and North Korea likely following suit.
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation (@Heritage). Heritage is best-known for opposing military aid to Ukraine and for their political initiative called Project 2025, a potential blueprint for a Trump presidency.
1/23
Before we begin, I want to justify this soup that focuses heavily on US domestic politics. As a strong supporter of Ukraine, I see Donald Trump as a threat to Ukraine’s existence, and the reasoning for that can be found in this previous soup:
Heritage was founded in 1973, but it took a leading role in conservative politics during the Reagan presidency, whose policies were mostly taken from the foundation’s book series called Mandate for Leadership. Project 2025 is the ninth iteration of this series.