In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a Swiss social media personality, investment banker and journalist, Vadim Loskutov (@runews). He's best-known for praising Russia and its politics, and criticizing the West while living comfortably in Switzerland.
1/16
This research was conducted in collaboration with the Swiss NAFO fellas and The Unintelligence Agency.
Loskutov allegedly originally hails from the Republic of Kalmykia, located in the North Caucasus region of Southern Russia.
2/16
According to some Wikibin entries, Vadim was allegedly building a career as a media personality in Russia. Based on the text, he worked as a presenter and video jockey on various Russian music shows during the 90s, and he allegedly also voiced radio advertisements.
3/16
The whole biography seems extremely sketchy, as he would've been just 13-years old when he was working as a music presenter on Russian national TV, and 18-years old when was a video jockey, producer and a host on Russian MTV.
4/16
There is hardly any proof of this, and the whole career history could be completely made up to hide his intelligence background or to help him getting employed in Switzerland. Whatever the truth is, we couldn't locate any evidence that a man named Vadim Loskutov ever...
5/16
...worked in the Russian music business. But we do know that Vadim had a show called RussenRadio! in Swiss alternative radio channel called LoRa. The show featured Russian music, news and comedy sketches for German and English speaking audiences.
6/16
According to Loskutov, he is a "seasoned journalist" with over 20 years of experience on "reporting on Investments, Cryptos, and Geopolitics". He also allegedly worked as a senior trader at Glencore, one of worlds biggest commodity trading and mining companies.
7/16
His public commercial records reveal that between 2012-2020 he was approved to make signatures (and from 2015 acted as the VC of their Zürich branch) for CBH, a Swiss private bank. The company has been involved in many alleged controversies, including money laundering.
8/16
Loskutov is also a big fanboy of Elon, and he's also a strong proponent of his "free speech absolutism" on X. It would be interesting to hear what Vadim has to say about specific search terms in relation to the conflict in Middle East that are now censored on this platform.
9/16
When it comes to Ukraine, Vadim's propaganda focuses on the Kremlin's main narratives: money laundering in Ukraine, Ukraine must negotiate truce, the US is falling apart whereas Russia is thriving.. & all this from the comfort of his allegedly nice apartment in Switzerland.
10/16
He seems to be a strong opponent of the "woke culture", often using the common phrase "go woke, go broke" whenever any big brand tries a marketing strategy involving "woke" elements like trans people or men wearing pink clothes. He also seems to hate the "woke" Swiss media.
11/16
Once the story about Donbass Devuska came out, he created a theory that WSJ was taking revenge on Russia after one of WSJ's journalists, Evan Gershkovich was arrested. He's also called WaPo a "NATO propaganda machine".
Vadim's favorite Swiss media seems to be Weltwoche.
12/16
In Apr 2023, the @runews account informed that he starts writing for pro-Kremlin outlet called Die Weltwöche. This connects the @runews account to Vadim Loskutov.
Weltwoche is a media project launched by the Swiss grand-vatnik Roger Köppel:
Ironically,he's complained about the lack of press freedom in Europe,while in his home country anyone who criticizes the Kremlin gets either murdered or imprisoned.He also supports German politician Sahra Wagenknecht's populist, pro-Kremlin policies:
14/16
Vadim also seems to be a raging antisemite. He called the 30 Oct 2023 pogrom of mob storming the Makhachkala airport in search of Jewish passengers from Israel a "protest". The term 'pogrom' refers to violent attacks by local non-Jewish populations on Jews in Russia.
15/16
In Feb 2023, Vadim tweeted that he was allegedly "charged" by the Swiss police & he called for @RusEmbSwiss to help him. It's a perfect example of how the 5th column lives in the West: they enjoy its luxuries, but whenever they run into trouble,they call for Russia to help.
16/16
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.
1/20
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.
2/20
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
In this first (and maybe last?) Basiji Soup, we’ll look at… the Islamic Republic of Iran, its disinformation operations, its hypocrisy, how it sells its atrocities as virtue and its repression as morality, how it serves the Kremlin, and the current protests against it.
1/20
Basijis are members of the most fanatical part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In a broader sense: Iranian regime loyalists & propagandists. They may be fewer than vatniks or wumaos, but the goal is the same: destabilize the West to protect a brutal regime.
2/20
The regime oppressing Iran is a “theocratic” authoritarian state around a “Supreme Leader” hiding behind religion to justify its crimes: censorship, repression, executions, torture and terror — similar to Russia and its “holy war” against Ukraine.