Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Feb 7, 2024 13 tweets 6 min read Read on X
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce the troll farm/paid shill talking points on the Carlson-Putin interview.

These are the most common arguments that pop up in the comment section when people criticize the upcoming interview.

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"It's good to hear the story from both sides"

In this case, the other side is a genocidal warmonger who even killed hundreds of his own people to justify a war in Chechnya. Putin can provide his perspective at the Hague.

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"Tucker is a journalist, let him do his job"

Tucker is a propagandist who is also extremely biased: In 2019, he said that "We should probably take the side of Russia if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine":

3/11

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"What about Gonzalo Lira?"

Lira was not a journalist, he was a dating coach who beat up his wife, kids and disabled nephew, who violated the Article 436-2 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code and tried to flee the country while on bail:

4/11
"The US is not at war with Russia"

Then why does the Kremlin call it a NATO proxy war?

5/11
"Why aren't you talking about Biden/border crisis/corruption in Ukraine/Nazis/Hunter Biden and biolabs?"

Because we're talking about Tucker Carlson and you're avoiding the topic. Anyway, here's a thread on the Kremlin's main narratives:

6/11
"Zelenskyy banned opposing media"

Ukraine banned Medvedchuk's - a personal friend of Putin's - TV channels that spread pro-Kremlin propaganda. He also banned Serhiy Liovochkin's website that was even worse than Medvedchuk's channels.

Also, Russia invaded Ukraine.

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"I want to hear what his [Putin's] interests are from his own mouth"

They're not a secret, you can read them from his 2021 revisionist and genocidal essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians".

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"I've always wanted to see a Putin interview because it never happens"

Putin has been interviewed many times. For example, by Larry King in 2000, Barbara Walters in 2001, his lapdog Oliver Stone in 2015-2017, Megyn Kelly and @ArminWolf in 2018, and Keir Simmons in 2021.

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In all of them, Putin evades the difficult questions, rewrites history to fit the Kremlin's narrative, and instead blames the West for everything. Wolf was one of the few who actually challenged him, see the interview with English captions below.

10/11
Finally, there is absolutely no media freedom in Russia and their World Press Freedom Index is one of the worst in the whole world.

More on how Russia treats its own journalists:

11/11
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APPENDIX:

I forgot the English captions from the Wolf interview - here they are.

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Feb 22
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a former Ukrainian politician and president, Viktor Yanukovych. He’s best known for selling his country to Russia, trying to turn it into an authoritarian state, and eventually fleeing to Moscow once his plan failed.

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Now that Russia and the US are planning to replace president Zelenskyy with someone who’s more willing to sell the country to them (most probably Viktor Medvedchuk or one of his cronies), it’s a good time to remind people how Yanukovych and Putin almost took over Ukraine.

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Yanukovych’s first attempt at power came in 2004, when he “won” the Ukrainian presidential election through massive fraud. The rigged vote sparked the Orange Revolution, a wave of protests that forced the election to be re-run. His opponent, pro-Western candidate…

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Read 23 tweets
Feb 20
Russia uses Tucker Carlson as a vessel for its propaganda. Many of the most popular narratives originate from his misinformation-filled show, which is funded by Elon. Some of these lies include:

- Bioweapons labs
- Gonzalo Lira being a "journalist"
-Zelenskyy being a dictator
- The banning of the Russian Orthodox Church
- The banning of Viktor Medvedchuk's pro-Kremlin propaganda network
- Putin's interview and revisionism
- That ridiculous St. Petersburg propaganda piece

Bob Amsterdam, who Tucker has interviewed a few times is paid by a Russian oligarch, Vadym Novynskyi.

We now know from the Tenet Media case that Russian state media wants to spread Tucker's verbal diarrhea everywhere. These fake stories have finally made their way to Trump.Image
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Read 4 tweets
Feb 19
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll take out my crystal ball and predict what the alliance between the US and Russia could mean for Ukraine, Europe and geopolitics in general. These recent changes could be a real risk for the whole of Europe, and need to be addressed quickly.

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Some of us have been reporting on Trump’s pro-Kremlin tendencies for years now. His Moscow connections go back all the way to the late 80s, and the 2016 US presidential elections raised a lot of red flags about the close connections of his associates to Russian operatives.

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The recent Rubio-Lavrov meeting in Saudi Arabia was an eye-opening event for many who were still optimistic about Trump and Ukraine – the outcome was that Putin got absolutely everything he’s ever wanted from the war, and at the same time it seems that the US got nothing.

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Read 24 tweets
Feb 18
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce how the Elon’s Election Interference Machine™ (EIM) works. Since Musk & his broligarch allies won the presidency for Trump, they’ve now harnessed the machine to interfere in European elections, including the ones in Germany & Romania.

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At this point it is clear why Elon bought Twitter – his grand plan was to promote “free speech absolutism” (which, of course, doesn’t even exist on the platform) and tweak the algorithms so that they allow him to promote political parties that align with his worldview.

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First, let’s talk about “freedom of speech” that the Trump administration, especially Musk and VP Vance constantly rant about. Incidentally, they only blame the EU for “limiting free speech”, and there’s a good reason for this: they are driving for political change.

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Read 24 tweets
Feb 14
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce the Russian disinformation network “Doppelgänger”. Doppelgänger is an influence and hybrid operation spreading Kremlin propaganda via AI-generated fake news websites and social media sites, especially X.

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Doppelgänger is a massive influence operation that was initially exposed back in 2022. Their modus operandi is to create near-identical copies of large, legitimate Western news outlets to spread anti-Ukraine, anti-Western and anti-NATO narratives.

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The operation, overseen by Putin’s top aide Sergei Kiriyenko (who’s reportedly communicated with Elon), uses Russian firms like Social Design Agency (SDA) to create fake news sites that mimick legitimate media like The Washington Post, The Guardian, Bild and Fox News.

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Read 21 tweets
Feb 13
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’m going to talk about Europe’s information defense against foreign influence operations & disinformation.

The EU can’t rely anymore on America’s help in geopolitical struggles, and it’s time we created a united front against information threats.

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Recent news coming from the US should be the final wake-up call for European decision-makers. Recently, Trump’s rhetoric has been openly pro-Kremlin and both anti-Ukraine & anti-EU, and at the same time the US is dismantling all institutions fighting against disinformation.

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So far, the Trump administration has put staffers working on disinformation as well as a team of election security advisers at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on administrative leave.

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Read 25 tweets

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