Thread by @khodorkovsky_en

MAGA influencer with 2.8M Twitter followers spent the last month in Moscow. He's now on the board of Putin's newest influence operation.

Here's how Jackson Hinkle went from spreading debunked war claims to the Kremlin's inner circle, thanks to @dossier_center

Hinkle, 25, is best known for spreading anti-Ukrainian fake news and photoshopped images on Twitter, which is the only platform he hasn’t been banned from yet

In October 2022, for example, he said Volodymyr Zelenskyy had fled to Poland, and this year he published a fake receipt suggesting Zelenskyy’s wife Olena had bought a $5m car. Both of these claims were easily debunked

Despite the obvious lies he posts, Hinkle’s profile on Twitter continues to grow, going from 417k followers a year ago to 2.8 million now. This has drawn the attention of the New York Times, which linked his rise in popularity to his posts about the Gaza war nytimes.com/2024/04/11/bus…

What the NYT missed, though, was that at the time they wrote that article in April, Hinkle had been in Moscow for a month, for what he said was an interview with fascist ‘philosopher’ Alexander Dugin

In Russia, Hinkle made the rounds of Putin’s various state media outlets, appearing on one of the many unbearable talk shows on Rossiya 1 and giving two interviews to RT

In fact, Hinkle has become a regular talking head on Putin TV, and appeared by invitation at regime-sponsored events. In February this year, he joined the board of the International Russophile Movement – the Kremlin’s latest soft power weapon

This group, overseen by Dugin and ultranationalist media executive Konstantin Malofeev, was founded last spring, and is known to include an array of foreign – including western – public figures

Among the group’s confirmed members are actor Steven Seagal, former German MP Waldemar Gerdt, former Bulgarian MP Nikolay Malinov, French far-right politician Fabrice Sorlin, and South African senator Nkosi Zwelivilile Mandela – grandson of Nelson Mandela

Russian authorities are open about the IRM’s political goals. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said the group is tasked with finding a ‘constructive alternative’ to western policy, and Putin himself praised its efforts to ‘counter the West’s attempts to isolate Russia’

In 2022, for example, Dugin held a meeting in Moscow with Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who had arrived in search of funds for his party. Malofeev is a known associate of Marine Le Pen, along with several members of the German party AfD

Malofeev has long sought to influence western politics in Putin’s favor. In 2013 he presented plans to create a global network of pro-Russian forces with the aim of ‘building a Greater Europe’ in line with the Kremlin’s ambitions

Apparently the regime has decided to return to this project. Western leaders should be wary of this effort, and take steps to ensure Putin is not permitted to gain influence over policy.

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