In today's #vatniksoup, I'll talk about Russian attempts to "russify" and completely wipe out the Ukrainian identity in the Eastern Ukrainian territories and Crimea that Russia is temporarily occupying.
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Today The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) published their findings on an extensive investigation spanning over several months, on the harsh reality of Russia's aggressive policy of assimilation in the regions they temporarily occupy in Eastern Ukraine.
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Eyewitnesses and experts have revealed incidences of torture, coercion, deportation, cultural erasure, and military indoctrination in these regions. All this is a violation of the international law and in some cases even amount to possible war crimes and genocide.
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Former police officer, Anton Lomakin from Kherson was detained for four months. During this time, he was given multiple electric shocks, beaten with an iron club & waterboarded. Waterboarding is illegal under the law of war with the adoption of the third Geneva Convention.
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Artem Petrik is currently doing his PhD in History in Vilnius. He was caught in Kherson after the start of the full-scale invasion, and was persecuted because of his profession: Russians consider a historian a propagandist, who is part of the ideological system.
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During the interview, he stated that "if you don't want to be Russian, you will die. If you support the Ukrainian identity, you will have serious problems: imprisonment, death, torture."
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Larysa Borova fled the occupied territories last June. She said that if you don't have a Russian passport, you don't get pension, food or medical services. She said that many elderly require medication and attain Russian passport just to stay alive.
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Leonid Remyga, a medical doctor who worked in Kherson told that they were forced to give out Russian birth certificates. They were forced to memorize the Russian anthem and if they couldn't, they were beaten and tortured.
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In addition, all children have to attend Russian schools and follow the Russian curriculum. Ukrainian children are being denied access to their own culture and their own history, and are being forced to learn the revised history of Russkiy Mir instead.
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Yet,people like @tuckercarlson & the Grayzone "journalists" are complaining because Ukraine is temporarily banning pro-Kremlin Orthodox churches that are basically an extension of the FSB. How corrupt and/or stupid do you have to be completely disregard an ongoing genocide?
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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
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.
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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.
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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.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce our first Czech vatnik, Tomio Okamura. He’s best known for building a political career on xenophobia while being of mixed origins himself, and for pushing Kremlin narratives in Czechia, a country otherwise very supportive of Ukraine.
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Okamura was born in Tokyo in 1972 to a Japanese-Korean father and Czech mother. He spent part of his childhood in Japan, and part in a Czechoslovak foster home where he was heavily bullied. His mixed origins made it difficult for him to fit in either country.
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Nonetheless, after working odd jobs in Japan, Tomio returned to Czechia and became a successful entrepreneur in Japanese tourism. He then rose in politics: Senator in 2012, MP in 2013, he founded two parties: Dawn of Direct Democracy and SPD (Freedom and Direct Democracy).
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll introduce an American billionaire, real estate developer, and wannabe diplomat, Steve Witkoff. He’s best known for trying to sell Ukraine to Putin and for helping Trump sell this treason and encouragement of genocidal war as “peace”.
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Steve studied law and political science at Hofstra University in New York. After law school, he worked as a real estate attorney, which led him into property acquisitions and development. He first met Trump in the 1980s when Trump was a client of his real estate law firm.
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In 1997, Witkoff founded the Witkoff Group, a New York–based real estate development and investment firm. The firm has owned and developed dozens of properties in New York and other major US cities, making Witkoff quite wealthy, with some interesting business connections.