In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce a Ukrainian “scholar” and social media activist, Marta Havryshko (@HavryshkoMarta). She’s best known for spreading anti-Ukraine and pro-Kremlin narratives online, along with a habit of spotting neo-Nazis everywhere in Ukraine.
1/20
Marta hails from Ukraine, where she studied history at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. She received her PhD in history in 2010. Her academic work focused on gender-based violence and wartime atrocities, including publications on sexual crimes in occupied Ukraine.
2/20
She is currently working as a visiting Assistant Professor at the Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Clark University in the US. According to the center’s website, Marta teaches courses on antisemitism, racism, and gender-based violence in armed conflicts.
3/20
But her academic background plays little role in her public profile. Marta gained Grokipedia (not Wikipedia) fame by sharing videos of alleged far-right activity and forced mobilization in Ukraine. She claims the country is a Nazi state, including its government.
4/20
Now, a clear distinction is needed between activism and academic work. Havryshko is not an expert on far-right or neo-Nazi groups and has no scientific publications on the topic. She should therefore be described as a heavily biased, anti-Ukraine online activist.
5/20
Ms. Havryshko eagerly highlights even minor social media posts showing alleged far-right activity in Ukraine, yet shows little interest when the same occurs in the US. In her upside-down framing, American neo-Nazis are protected by the First Amendment, so it’s all kosher.
6/20
Due to her harsh and often unwarranted criticism of everything Ukraine-related, she has become popular in vatnik circles. The appeal is obvious: she is Ukrainian, claims to be “pro-humanity,” and opposes any positive change, like joining the EU, for her home country.
7/20
This likely explains why she has become a regular guest on Norwegian vatnik Glenn Diesen’s show. Diesen is a member of Putin’s Valdai club, has worked extensively for RT, denied Russia’s role in the MH17 shootdown, and labeled the Euromaidan as a “NATO-backed coup d’État.”
8/20
And if chatting shit with Diesen wasn’t bad enough, it gets worse. Much worse. In December 2025, Marta appeared on Jackson Hinkle’s Legitimate Targets propaganda show. As a Ukrainian activist, she did not seem bothered by Hinkle’s open support for the Putin regime.
9/20
And Hinkle is not just your average vatnik, he is a fanatical supporter of all the worst dictators and atrocities around, including the Nazi-themed Wagner group, infamous for torture and sexual abuse, Assad, Iran, Hamas and Stalin. To be fair, he probably gets paid for it.
10/20
None of Hinkle’s or Diesen’s shenanigans seem to bother Marta, which is striking given her academic background in Holocaust and genocide studies, including a stated focus on gender-based sexual violence and wartime atrocities under occupation.
She is celebrated by nostalgia-driven far-leftists and pro-Kremlin “journalists” such as the Grayzone crowd, Tarik Cyril Amar, and Ivan Katchanovski. Even Mark “Russian women expect you to rape them” Ames signed an open letter in defense of Ms. Havryshko.
12/20
Recently, Marta shared a speech by AfD leader Alice Weidel, rhetorically asking her followers whether this was “true leadership that Germany needs.” In the speech, Weidel called for an end to military aid to Ukraine and demanded the repair of the Nord Stream pipeline.
13/20
AfD is a far-right party whose members have openly expressed neo-Nazi views. In 2024, Weidel’s then-advisor Roland Hartwig attended a meeting with neo-Nazi influencers where plans for mass deportations of “non-assimilated people” were openly discussed.
14/20
For some reason, Marta failed to do even basic background research on AfD. She missed that the party’s members have used Nazi paramilitary slogans like “Alles für Deutschland,” and some have openly defended the Waffen SS. And here we thought she was against neo-Nazism.
15/20
If Havryshko sees no issue associating with figures like Jackson Hinkle, who praised Putin from the start of the full-scale invasion, or with parties like AfD, which is openly hostile to Ukraine and supportive of Russia, her sudden re-alignment towards Moscow is clear.
16/20
Judging by her recent sarcastic posts, she now openly despises Ukraine. Marta’s rapid shift from a refugee who fled Putin’s invasion and understood the need to fight him to a pro-Kremlin activist claiming Ukraine started the war raises an obvious question — what happened?
17/20
Marta often encourages pro-Ukraine activists to “go to the front.” One of them did, and later urged her to raise funds for Ukrainian children or civilians. Instead, he was accused of “stalking,” and as far as we know Ms Havryshko has raised a grand total of 0€ for Ukraine.
18/20
Unlike other vatniks, Marta does not deny Russian atrocities — she just seems to argue they are all the more reason to surrender (to those committing them!), as if that would somehow make them stop. Arguably, this is even more insidious than open support for the invasion.
19/20
To conclude, Marta Havryshko is an activist who completely switched sides on the invasion of her home country. This has made her warmly welcomed by the pro-kremlin crowd, who embraced her as one of their own.
Thank you @geogvma for the inspiration for this “poule au pot”.
20/20
Enjoyed this soup? Brandolini’s law: The amount of energy needed to refute vatnik propaganda is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. Fact-based research takes time and effort — please support our work: vatniksoup.com/en/support-our…
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In this 9th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss “legitimate military targets”. Russia illegally invaded Ukraine, with no declaration of war, hiding behind a “special military operation”. Yet vatniks & useful idiots pretend Russia has any legitimate or lawful targets in Ukraine.
1/8
Russia started the war in 2014 by seizing Crimea with unmarked soldiers, “little green men”. Russians have been waging an undeclared, illegal war with endless war crimes ever since, whether it’s kidnapping of Ukrainian children with genocidal intent…
… the concentration camps for Ukrainians under occupation, conscripting Ukrainians from occupied territories, or the terrorist, deliberate bombing of civilians, including their infamous “double tap” strikes.
So no, Russia does not have any “legitimate targets” in Ukraine.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Hasan Piker, a Turkish-American streamer and millionaire. He’s best known for his champagne socialism, rabid criticism of the US and Israel, support for the Soviet Union and for Chinese and Russian invasions, and for mistreating his dog.
1/20
Born in 1991, Piker grew up in a privileged and well-connected environment. His father held senior roles at big corporations and his uncle, Cenk Uygur, is the founder of The Young Turks media network. He graduated cum laude from Rutgers, a top-tier university in New Jersey.
2/20
His main activity and primary source of income consists of hours-long livestreams on Twitch where he comments on news and yells at videos. He also keeps his dog in place the whole time with a shock collar.
What you see happening here is coordinated strategic communication by the Trump cult. Elon’s baby mama and former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair explained this ecosystem in a long video. They have built platforms where people can find narratives to spread and get paid for doing so.
Even though the system technically breaks the platform's ToS, this is perfectly fine for @nikitabier and the rest of the X crew, because Elon pays their salaries and this is part of his election interference machinery.
If you wanna know how the system works, read this:
Here’s Ashley’s video, where she explains how the system works. She was immediately attacked by various MAGA actors, which suggests that what she said hit a nerve.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and politician. He’s best known for rising to power at the height of the Greek debt crisis, not solving anything but endearing himself to the left, and using his fame to promote Russian imperialism.
1/20
Born in 1961 in Athens, Varoufakis studied economics in the UK and built an academic career in Australia, the US, and Europe. His early work focused on game theory, political economy, and critiques of capitalism.
2/20
Presenting himself as the fearless, unorthodox economist willing to confront the EU’s “neoliberal” elites, he rose to prominence during Greece’s debt crisis. At its height in 2015, he was appointed finance minister under the left-wing Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras.
In this 8th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss complaints about US financing of NATO, in particular how the US allegedly pays for European defense, leading to calls for a US withdrawal from the Alliance — which would only make it easier for Putin to invade more countries.
1/7
NATO by itself costs peanuts. In fact, the core of NATO is a principle, an agreement, that ideally costs nothing. The main cost is defense spending, which the US is eagerly doing anyway: Trump has just announced a 50% increase in military spending for his “Department of War”. 2/7
To sow division and thereby weaken the Alliance, vatniks deliberately mix up different figures, such as contributions to the NATO common budget, with defense spending. And US military spending has been huge by the sheer fact that the US is the world’s largest economy.
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.