Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Oct 10, 2023 19 tweets 9 min read Read on X
In today's #vatniksoup, I'm going to talk about Russia's involvement in the Middle East politics. Countries like Iran have been assisting Russia in their genocidal war in Ukraine, and the Kremlin has also meddled with various extremist groups in the region.

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Historically, Russia/USSR has been involved in numerous wars in the Middle East, invading Afghanistan for almost 10 years and recently helping Syria's authoritarian leader al-Assad to stay in power. In Syria, Russia was best-known for their brutal tactics against civilians.

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But Russia has also been flirting with the militant groups in the region, including both Hamas and Hezbollah. Hamas is a Palestinian political and terrorist organization that governs one of the Palestinian territories, the Gaza Strip. On 7 Oct 2023, ...

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...Hamas launched a terrorist operation against Israel, killing civilians and taking them as hostages. One of their targets was a music festival, where they massacred more than 260 people.

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Russia has met Hamas leaders of several occasions, and Hamas sent high-level delegation to meet Russian officials early this year. After the attack, Russia "cited concern", but didn't condemn Hamas' terrorist attack. Russia does not consider Hamas a terrorist organization.

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Hezbollah is a Lebanese political party and militant group that allegedly gets most of their funding from Iran. The organization has waged war against Israel and IDF on various occasions, including in the 2006 Lebanon War.

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Along with countries like Algeria, China, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea, Russia has refused to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization, and calls them a "legitimate socio-political force" instead.

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Russia and Hezbollah have even fought together with al-Assad's troops in Syria. In 2018, they also smuggled oil together in order to evade economic sanctions set against al-Assad's regime.

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Hezbollah has allegedly joined Hamas in their fight against Israel, and on 9 Oct 2023, they published a "promotional" video declaring war against the IDF.

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Naturally, Iran is close to all these countries and organizations. According to US official, Iran pays Hezbollah around 700 million USD annually. Hezbollah has also been connected to cigarette and drug smuggling operations.

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Hamas had allegedly received weapons and training from Iran, and intelligence officials have confirmed that Hamas received help from Iran in manufacturing over 4000 rockets and drones launched to Israel since 7 Oct 2023.

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Iran-Russia relations go also way back, and the Soviet Union was the first state to recognize the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. In 1989, Iran made an arms deal with Soviet Union, and after the fall of USSR this collaboration continued.

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In May 2007, Iran was invited to join the CSTO, a Russia-based organization to counter NATO, but they eventually decided against joining the treaty. In 2015, Putin lifted a ban on weapon sales to Iran and Russia delivered several S-300 missile systems to Iran and the...

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...two countries agreed on another $10 billion deal that included helicopters, planes and artillery systems.

In 2022, Russian delegation visited Iran to observe drones manufactured by Iran. Initially, Iran downplayed the drone transfers, saying that it would not...

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...supply any weapons to Russia and encouraged both Russia and Ukraine to seek a peaceful resolution. In Sep 2022, Ukrainian military claimed that it encountered Iranian-built suicide drones that were operated by the Russians.

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In Oct 2022, Iran agreed to provide additional missiles and drones to Russia. In 2023, various media outlets have reported that Iran has been assisting Russia in building a suicide drone factory within its borders.

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Among military targets, these drones have been used heavily against civilian targets and have cause massive civilian casualties in Ukraine.

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To conclude: In Middle East, Russia has been flirting with authoritarian regimes like Syria and Iran. In addition, they've had close relations with terrorist and militia groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, further destabilizing the region.

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All soups:
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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Dec 20
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American radio host and propagandist, Scott Horton (@scotthortonshow). He’s best known for blaming Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine on the US, and for publishing a 700-page book full of Kremlin propaganda.

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Most of you probably remember Scotty from this recent episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored, in which he was schooled for his revisionist propaganda by Ukrainian volunteer and activist Anastasiya Paraskevova (@UkrainianAna).

2/23
Let’s start with the obvious - Scott Horton is a hardcore Kremlin apologist who sees nothing wrong with what Putin does, but strongly condemns anything that Ukrainians do to defend themselves. For Horton,the enemy is the US and all of its allies. The way this works is that…
3/23
Read 24 tweets
Dec 4
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss the sad (but funny) state of Finnish vatniks. After Russia launched their full-scale invasion against Ukraine, the Finnish pro-Kremlin/conspiracy theorist scene experienced a dramatic devaluation and hasn’t been able to bounce back since.
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I often get asked about the current state of the Finnish vatnik club, and there’s usually not much to report.

It’s not because these people have stopped, but because today their work has only comedic value.

So here’s the latest:

2/20
Master vatnik and traitor Johan Bäckman has relocated to Russia, and he was recently given a Russian citizenship. It’s obvious that Johan was recruited by Russia’s intelligence agencies a long time ago. He’s still producing videos on YouTube on his…

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Read 21 tweets
Nov 29
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Romanian politician and conspiracy theorist, Călin Georgescu (@calin_georgescu). He’s best-known for his pro-Kremlin and conspiratorial views, running for president of Romania, and doing it by only campaigning on TikTok.

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Georgescu has a doctorate in pedology (a branch of soil science), and held various positions in Romania’s environment ministry during the 90s.

Between 1999-2012, he was a representative for Romania on the national committee of the United Nations Environment Program.

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He was proposed as Romania’s prime minister in 2011, 2012 and 2016 by Romanian far-right parties, but he rose to international infamy in 2024, when he ran for president of Romania independently and obtained the most votes (22,95%) out of all candidates in the first round.

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Read 26 tweets
Nov 28
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Canadian journalist and alleged Soviet/Russian spy, David Pugliese (@davidpugliese). He’s best-known for his articles about “Ukrainian Nazis”, and for allegedly being a spy for both the Soviet Union and later Russia.

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Several months ago I was anonymously sent a pile of documents from the mid-80s originating from the KGB archives in Kyiv. These documents outlined a KGB recruitment into “Stuart”, or David Pugliese who “works in foreign mass media” and who is…

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..“studied with the perspective of possible operative use”. Another document described “Stuart’s” contact “Ivan”, who allegedly became his handler.Some have speculated that “Ivan” is Fred Weir, a correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor.He’s lived in Moscow since 1986.
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Read 22 tweets
Nov 11
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.

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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…

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..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.
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Read 20 tweets
Nov 7
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.

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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.

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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.

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Read 18 tweets

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