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
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In today’s Debunk of the Day (2), we’ll look at… nuclear blackmail. Vatniks love using Russia’s nuclear threats as a reason for surrendering or for not lifting a finger to help Ukraine: “see, they have nukes, we have to give them whatever they want”.
The argument is absurd: 1/5
Nuclear deterrence has been a reality for decades. Both the US and Russia have lost wars without resorting to nukes. We are not submitting to the whims of Pakistan or North Korea either. For vatniks, it’s just an insidious way of siding with Putin. 2/5
We can’t just give in to the Kremlin’s nuclear blackmail, to the threats their officials and propagandists make five times a day to scare us into letting them have something they know perfectly well is not theirs, with no limit to their appetite. 3/5 vatniksoup.com/en/nuclear-thr…
In today’s (first) Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about… “realistic expectations”.
Russia has the GDP of Italy. NATO — which Russia claims to be fighting — has 20 times their GDP, and a much stronger and more modern military. 1/5
Russia’s full scale invasion was supposed to take 2 days, but we’re nearing 4 years. They’ve lost a million men. Their economy is in shambles.
And yet we're letting them set their red lines instead of massive sanctions, strong support for Ukraine, and an immediate sky shield. 2/5
Russia thought their war was “realistic” because we’d let them get away with it. It wouldn’t be “realistic” to invade a European nation and redraw borders by force if the West had a strong and united response.
What’s “realistic” is what public opinion tolerates and accepts. 3/5
In this first (and maybe last?) Basiji Soup, we’ll look at… the Islamic Republic of Iran, its disinformation operations, its hypocrisy, how it sells its atrocities as virtue and its repression as morality, how it serves the Kremlin, and the current protests against it.
1/20
Basijis are members of the most fanatical part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In a broader sense: Iranian regime loyalists & propagandists. They may be fewer than vatniks or wumaos, but the goal is the same: destabilize the West to protect a brutal regime.
2/20
The regime oppressing Iran is a “theocratic” authoritarian state around a “Supreme Leader” hiding behind religion to justify its crimes: censorship, repression, executions, torture and terror — similar to Russia and its “holy war” against Ukraine.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce our first Czech vatnik, Tomio Okamura. He’s best known for building a political career on xenophobia while being of mixed origins himself, and for pushing Kremlin narratives in Czechia, a country otherwise very supportive of Ukraine.
1/19
Okamura was born in Tokyo in 1972 to a Japanese-Korean father and Czech mother. He spent part of his childhood in Japan, and part in a Czechoslovak foster home where he was heavily bullied. His mixed origins made it difficult for him to fit in either country.
2/19
Nonetheless, after working odd jobs in Japan, Tomio returned to Czechia and became a successful entrepreneur in Japanese tourism. He then rose in politics: Senator in 2012, MP in 2013, he founded two parties: Dawn of Direct Democracy and SPD (Freedom and Direct Democracy).
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll introduce an American billionaire, real estate developer, and wannabe diplomat, Steve Witkoff. He’s best known for trying to sell Ukraine to Putin and for helping Trump sell this treason and encouragement of genocidal war as “peace”.
1/20
Steve studied law and political science at Hofstra University in New York. After law school, he worked as a real estate attorney, which led him into property acquisitions and development. He first met Trump in the 1980s when Trump was a client of his real estate law firm.
2/20
In 1997, Witkoff founded the Witkoff Group, a New York–based real estate development and investment firm. The firm has owned and developed dozens of properties in New York and other major US cities, making Witkoff quite wealthy, with some interesting business connections.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, our first on a non-human vatnik, we’ll talk about… Grok @grok. It’s best known for turning into Mecha-Hitler and Mecha-Putler and for defending its vatnik master, Elon Musk, at all costs, up to being willing to sacrifice the rest of mankind for him.
1/24
Let’s start with an introduction into how Large Language Models (LLMs) work, and the new “arguing with your toaster” phenomenon. LLMs like Grok are Artificial Intelligence (AI) but not the way we had imagined — a new form of intelligence that would somehow think like us.
2/24
Instead, LLMs are basically “guessing engines” and search engines trained on a massive dataset to give you the output you expect: they are imitating intelligence rather than being an actual intelligence. They’re chatbots generating responses pretending to be a helpful AI.