Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jan 5 17 tweets 9 min read Read on X
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce a Finnish academic and political scientist, Heikki Patomäki. He's best-known for his euroskepticism, anti-NATO stance, and for his complete misunderstanding of Vladimir Putin and his regime.

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Patomäki currently works at the Helsinki University as a Professor of Political Science, and he's also a supervisor of the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Change.

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Previously, he was involved in politics as a member of a Finnish left-wing party Vasemmistoliitto, but resigned in May 2022 after Finland applied to join NATO.

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Patomäki started his political career in the right-wing Youth of the National Coalition Party, but eventually shifted towards the environmentalist greens with strong emphasis on advocating peace.

(text translated from Finnish to English)

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In 2007 he published a book "Uusliberalismi Suomessa" ("Neoliberalism in Finland"), in which he compared neoliberalism to fascism. Incidentally, in his book Patomäki called former Finnish PM Paavo Lipponen, who was involved in the development of Nord Stream, a neoliberal.

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In Sep 2014, he wrote an op-ed on Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, in which he criticised the sanctions set against Russia after the annexation of Crimea. He also blamed NATO expansion and EU's collaboration offers to Ukraine for the conflict.

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In 2015, he stated that Putin's Russia "completely lacks Hitler's racist ideology, which led to genocide." In retrospect, we can clearly see that Professor Patomäki was dead wrong on this.

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In the same interview, he also stated that Russia under Putin is "still a liberal democracy that respects human rights". At this point, Putin had already murdered and imprisoned several journalists in Russia and assassinated many of its own citizens abroad.

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To me it seems like Patomäki observes geopolitics through a Mearsheimerian lense of offensive realism, where empires have their "spheres of influence," and smaller, sovereign nations just have to obey their "masters":



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In an interview on 5 Jan 2024, Patomäki stated that peace in Ukraine can only be achieved if they give up their goals of joining NATO. He also stated that the regions invaded by Russia should be controlled by the UN, and that their fate should be decided through...

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..diplomacy & by holding a referendum. By his view, Ukraine's willingness to join NATO was the "red line" that started the war.He also repeated the myth over the West "sabotaging the peace talks",even though Russia controlled large area of Ukraine & had no desire for peace.
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Accord to Patomäki, Ukraine can't win even if they got full support from the West, even though Ukraine has been defending bravely against Russia's meat waves for almost 700 days now, and even re-captured several areas like Kharkiv and Kherson.

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He admits, that even if there is an agreement on truce, there are no guarantees for permanent peace. Many have speculated, that Russia would use this time to re-group and eventually attack Ukraine again.

As a reminder, there was a SECOND Chechen War, after all.

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Finally, the Professor criticises the Finnish discussion culture revolving around the Russo-Ukrainian War. He claims that the "public debate in Finland is not in a very good place at the moment," suggesting that you're not allowed to "disagree with the mainstream opinion".

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In my view, Mr. Patomäki just has difficulties to see Russia as it is: an authoritarian and genocidal empire trying to expand its borders slowly but surely:



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And all this talk about the suppression of different opinions was published in the second biggest yellow press magazine Iltalehti.

Does the Professor think that this would be possible in Russia, that according to him, is a "liberal democracy that respects human rights"?

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I have paused personal donations for now, please support @U24_gov_ua by donating to the #HopakChallenge and sending me the receipt:

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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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