Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
May 30 20 tweets 11 min read Read on X
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Belarusian politician and dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. He’s best-known for giving up his country to Russia, and for cracking up political opposition and dissidents in Belarus, ruling the country with an iron fist.

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Alexander was born in the Byelorussian SSR, living an unhappy childhood with his mother, taunted by his schoolmates due to being fatherless. His father’s identity is not known, but there’s a rumour that his father was a Roma traveler passing through the region.

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Lukashenko joined the Soviet Communist Party in 1979, and a few years later he became the deputy chairman of a collective farm. By 1990, he had risen to the rank of Deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian SSR. He claimed to be an opponent of corruption…

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…and in 1993 he accused 70 senior government officials of corruption, including stealing state funds for personal purposes. Apparently these accusations had no merit, but some high-ranking officials resigned nevertheless due to the embarrassment.

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After the fall of the USSR, Belarus held its first democratic presidential election in 1994. Naturally, Lukashenko ran in the most populist way, claiming to be “neither leftist nor rightist” but “with the people against those who rob and deceive them”.

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Soon after this, Lukashenko started the Russification process of Belarus. He held a referendum that enabled economic integration with Russia and gave him the power to dissolve the parliament. OSCE stated that the referendum didn’t meet the conditions of being free or fair.

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Lukashenko was re-elected in 2001 in the first round in an election that was widely considered yet again not free or fair. Putin supported the Belarusian dictator, but for that Lukashenko had to give up control over their section of the Yamal–Europe gas pipeline.

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In 2004, Lukashenko eliminated presidential term limits, making himself eligible for a lifetime of presidency & he was re-elected again in 2006. This resulted in massive protests, after which he stated that the opposition is “funded by foreign countries,” and is “not needed”.8/19
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During early 2000s, Lukashenko allied with other authoritarian regimes, including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei and president Ahmadinejad. He also suggested to Yugoslav President Milošević that Yugoslavia join the Union of Russia & Belarus.

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During the 2010 election, Lukashenko started cracking down on his opposition, as two other presidential candidates were beaten up and at least seven other candidates were arrested. In Dec 2010, several European foreign ministers published an op-ed criticizing Lukashenko.

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In 2020, after being re-elected for his sixth term, massive protests erupted across Belarus. The protesters accused Lukashenko of widespread electoral fraud, and opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya claimed she had received 60-70% of the total vote.

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Like Yanukovych, Lukashenko was also planning on escaping to Russia if he’d become a “former president”. In Aug 2020, the European Parliament declared Lukashenko “persona non grata” in the EU and claimed that he’s not the president anymore. Lukashenko later took revenge …

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… vowing to “flood” Europe with “drugs and migrants”. Soon after this, Belarusian tourist agencies started advertising in the Middle East, promoting a hassle-free entry to the EU and its countries with good social welfare system, doubling flights from Baghdad to Minsk.

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After the election, Alexander became extremely paranoid, walking everywhere wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a gun. In 2021, FSB claimed that there was a plot by the “Ukrainian nationalists” to launch a military coup and assassination attempt against Lukashenko.

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To protect his friends, Lukashenko formed a Security Council consisting of his close allies. He then signed a presidential decree, saying that in the event that the president is unable to perform his duties, martial law will be imposed and the Council will take over.

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Throughout his career, thousands of people in Belarus have become victims of torture, sexual abuse, and other forms of repression. Several opposition figures have also simply disappeared,and the Belarusian secret service have even plotted on assassinating dissidents abroad.
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Lukashenko managed to turn Belarus into a pro-Kremlin dictatorship by completely destroying the opposition, replacing officials and politicians with his friends, and changing the constitution so that he can stay in power indefinitely.

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The story of Lukashenko’s rise to power is an important one, as it is something that could happen in many other countries that are now considered democratic.

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We’ve already seen how Viktor Orban has taken over Hungary using similar strategies as Lukashenko previously did, and a similar faith was planned for Ukraine, too:



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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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