In today's Holiday #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American social media personality and fifth columnist, @Zagonel85. He's best-known for his strong anti-Ukraine rhetoric, and hosting Spaces on X featuring prominent vatniks like convicted sex offender Scott Ritter.
1/18
This investigation was done in collaboration with @UnintelAgency.
Looking at the description, you can clearly see that he's just your typical social media vatnik, spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda.
What you probably didn't know is that he's also a Tolstoy.
2/18
Let's start with the rather interesting bit - Mr. Tolstoy is, as a matter of fact, the great grandnephew of author Leo Tolstoy, and son of the late Count Vladimir Tolstoy. Vladimir was influential figure in Russian emigree circles in Washington DC until his death in 2020.
3/18
Count Tolstoy helped with the development of the St. Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral, and organized the Annual Russian Ball popular in the "White Russian" (exiled Tsarists) community.
The Tsarist community are by and large not fans of Communists or Putin's fascist regime.
4/18
Tolstoy even worked briefly an Office Manager at the Cathedral where his father was Sub-Deacon, a job his father no doubt got for him.
Incidentally, the Cathedral is currently collecting donations for Ukraine.
5/18
Tolstoy really doesn’t like the "decadent West" and its values, often complaining about LGBT+ issues and calling Ukraine’s supporters "f**gots" when the identity of @vonClownsewitz was revealed.
Incidentally, Tolstoy's brother regularly attends Pride parades.
6/18
For obvious reasons, Tolstoy has been extremely hostile against many published investigations conducted by @UnintelAgency and yours truly, saying that there's "a cold place in hell" for us. In his case, he probably wants to protect the family name.
7/18
It probably goes without saying, but Tolstoy is very anti-Ukraine. Interestingly, his views contrast with public statements made by The Russian Ball of Washington.
But we all should be entitled for our own opinion, even when it has no basis in reality.
8/18
He's claimed that "there's zero evidence of Russian genocide [in Ukraine]", and that Bucha was fabricated by the SBU. According to him, the shoot down of MH17 was "propaganda", and that Euromaidan and the following Revolution of Dignity were an "illegal coup".
9/18
He's also supported various false claims, including the one where Zelenskyy allegedly bought a 5 million USD villa in Egypt. Then there are the "Ukrainian Nazis" - according to Tolstoy, Ukraine is simply full of them!
10/18
In addition, he's called the January 6 Capitol Attack a "democrat BlueAnon conspiracy theory", said that "white supremacist militias aren't real", and that the West is constantly attempting to "provoke Russia". He also thinks Zelenskyy is a drug addict.
11/18
According to Tolstoy, Ukrainian soldiers are "holed up" in civilian buildings, and that this strategy was actually recommended to the Ukrainians by NATO. Apparently, the Russians can do no harm and have not targeted any civilian targets in Ukraine, Syria or Chechnya.
12/18
As is the case with many of these extremely hostile accounts, there's an infinite amount of examples like this. In addition, he's made fun of Ukrainian PoW's, compared Hamas with Zelenskyy, and used plenty of ethnic slurs against Ukrainians.
13/18
Tolstoy's also commented on conflict in the Middle East, calling Oct 7 terrorist attack a "military action against Israel". He's also called Israel a "Russian cuck".
14/18
There have been some hints about Tolstoy's connections to Russian power figures: he once even claimed to have met Putin himself, continuing that he has "extensive Russian connections". These family connections have been to Tolstoy's personal advantage,...
15/18
...although given he lived with his mother until recently, it doesn't seem he took advantage of them. His employment history contains a series of internships followed by an attempt at launching an app. These days, he averages ~17 hours on social media.
16/18
Most of this time is spent on X's Spaces, where he hangs out with like-minded people like the decadent Westerner and sexual deviant Scott Ritter, X's biggest liar @ShaykhSulaiman, neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, and Malaysian US expert and RT columnist @stillgray.
17/18
To conclude: Tolstoy is a great example of a "kid" (to be fair he's almost 40) who tries too hard to distance themselves from their parents and their heritage, and hangs out with fellow communists like @vonClownsewitz.
Ironically, he's also a Lockheed Martin share owner.
18/18
I have paused personal donations for now, please support @U24_gov_ua by donating to the #HopakChallenge and sending me the receipt:
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll talk about why we’re doing this: why we think Ukraine is so important and why we believe that souping vatniks and debunking their propaganda narratives is so crucial to counter Russia’s & their allies’ wars of aggression and achieve real peace.
1/20
War is expensive, and Russia is not a rich country that could afford this: Hospitals? Roads? Plumbing? No: everything into terror and destruction.
But not only that. There is a 2nd item in the Russian state budget that remains strong no matter what:
Manufacturing support for that terror and destruction. Propaganda. Vatniks. “Innocent” travel bloggers. “Independent” journalists. “Patriotic” politicians. Russia spends hundreds of billions of rubles a year ($5 billion) on this, and that kind of money buys you A LOT of BS.
In this second (and possibly last) Basiji Soup, we’ll explore how the Islamic Republic of Iran has prepared for a conflict with the US and Israel. We won’t cover the military aspects, but another kind of war — information warfare.
1/20
In the 1st Basiji Soup, we souped the Islamic Republic, its disinformation operations, its hypocrisy, its support of terrorism including Russia’s, its (one-sided?) relationship with Putin, and the mass protests against it that started two months ago:
The Internet blackout has been crucial in allowing the regime to cover up its massacre of the protesters and especially the scope of it, making it difficult to assess the number of victims. They went to great lengths to jam Starlink, after having made its use illegal.
In this 7th Debunk of the Day, we’ll expose the “Chickenhawk” fallacy. The chickenhawk accusation or the “go to the front!” imperative is a dishonest attempt to silence anyone supporting Ukraine by pushing them to go fight. A barely hidden death wish, as it’s always uttered… 1/5
…with zero regard for who you are or what your personal circumstances might be — you could already be there, on your way there, a veteran, or unable to fight. More broadly, not everyone can or should be a soldier, just as not everyone can or should be a policeman or a nurse. 2/5
Yet a society still needs those things to be done, and the fact that not everyone can go to medical school or fight crime does not mean that we have to surrender to invaders and criminals, nor that we cannot all have an opinion on healthcare. 3/5
In this 6th Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about a complex and controversial topic: conscription. It is used by vatniks to attack Ukraine for drafting men to fight, while conveniently ignoring the alternative, including the horrors of conscription into the Russian army. 1/8
Military obligations are a reality in many countries, from the most peaceful democracies to the most tyrannical dictatorships — unless you have “bone spurs”. Some argue it is a necessity for defense against invading armies, especially for small countries. 2/8
Others point out that it goes against individual rights or that a professional army is better. And Zelenskyy might agree: he did in fact end conscription. But then a full-scale invasion happened: exactly why many nations, including the US, still keep some form of draft. 3/8
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll introduce the International Olympic Committee (IOC) @Olympics . It’s mostly known for organizing sporting events, and for being supposed to foster the Olympic ideal while actually submitting to dictators.
1/15
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was founded in 1894 in Paris by Pierre de Coubertin with a noble goal: promote peace through sports. Politics out, sportsmanship in: sounds great in theory.
2/15
But in practice, the IOC has a long history of accommodating authoritarian regimes, always in the name of “neutrality,” “dialogue,” and “keeping sports separate from politics”, usually not in a particularly consistent or moral way.
In today’s Wumao Soup, we’ll tell you 15 things about the People’s Republic of China that you didn’t learn from TikTok, Douyin or DeepSeek.
1/20
This is our 2nd Wumao Soup. In the 1st one, we introduced how the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) online propaganda works. Now we’ll cover some of the big topics they hide or lie about. Think of it as an antidote soup to their propaganda.
1 - Tiananmen Square massacre
Yes, it happened. Yes, it was a massacre. Vatniks, wumaos, and tankies in the West deny it, while China censors the slightest mention of it, even the date it happened.