Vatnik Soup Profile picture
May 11 8 tweets 6 min read Read on X
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 May 6, 2026, Sumy, Sumy Oblast, Ukraine  Russian drones hit a kindergarten in central Sumy. Two women were killed and seven injured.  Photo: Suspilne Sumy
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…

2/8
… 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.

3/8
Margarita Simonyan, head of Putin’s state propaganda media RT: “We are bombing everyday.”
Deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime and terrorism, and Russia has been doing that from the start. MH17 is an early example. They have also been using state-funded terrorist organizations like Wagner, and in fact they often boast about their acts of terrorism.

4/8 “Incidents of Red aircraft strafing hospitals and hospital trains were so common that the Finns finally painted over any Red Cross insignia that were visible from the air.” ― William R. Trotter, A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down by Russian-backed forces with a Buk 9M38 surface-to-air missile on 17 July 2014, while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed.

But sometimes, vatniks pretend they’re only targeting military targets in Ukraine, with civilian casualties being mere collateral damage. This is a lie of course: hospitals, evacuation corridors, power plants, buildings marked “children”, whole cities: they bomb everything.

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July 8, 2024, Kyiv, Ukraine  A Russian missile struck Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv, the country’s largest, damaging several wards including oncology and intensive care. Two people were killed and dozens injured, including children. Other Russian strikes that same day killed another 40 civilians, including five children.  Photo: Oleksandr Ratushniak/Reuters
March 16, 2022, Mariupol, Ukraine  Hundreds of civilians had taken refuge in the Mariupol Drama Theatre, including children, with “children” written in Russian on the pavement. Russia bombed it anyway, killing an estimated 600 civilians. After occupying the city, Russia rebuilt the theatre and reopened it on December 28, 2025, to perform Russian plays as part of their “Russification”: genocidal erasure of Ukrainian people, state and culture. An actor who had been performing at the theatre since 2000 described it as “performing a play on the bones of the dead”.   Photo: Pavel Klimov/Reuters
Accusations of “putting civilians in harm’s way” against Ukraine ignore both the fact of who’s the aggressor doing the harm here, and naively assume the terrorist aggressor would avoid civilian targets, when in fact the opposite is true: they deliberately target them anyway.

6/8 Attacking hospitals is part of Putin’s plan https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-targeted-hospitals-ukraine-war-okhmatdyt-vladimir-putin/
3000 attacks on health care in Ukraine verified by WHO since full-scale invasion https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/08-05-2026-3000-attacks-on-health-care-in-ukraine-verified-by-who-since-full-scale-invasion
Ukrainians are in their own country. They did not start this war. They did not attack Russia and “hide behind civilians” — when military units are present in civilian areas, it is precisely to protect them from Russian terrorism.

Russia should not be bombing Ukraine, period.
7/8 March 15, 2014, Zolochiv, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine  A Russian missile strike hit the Zolochiv Central District Hospital. An emergency medical center, a dormitory and two ambulances were destroyed.  Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
September 12, 2024, Viroliubivka, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine  Russian shelling killed three Ukrainian working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), wounded two others and destroyed a Red Cross cargo truck.  Photo: Donetsk region police
June 27, 2022, Kremenchuk, Poltava Oblast, Ukraine  A Russian missile strike hit a crowded shopping center with hundreds of people inside at 4pm. 21 people were willed and 59 injured.  Photo: State Emergency Service Of Ukraine
The Kremlin spends $5 billion a year on propaganda to make world opinion tolerate their terrorist, genocidal invasions, spreading lame excuses like this one with armies of bots and trolls. Help us fight that — please support our work:

8/8
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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Jun 6
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Vincent Bolloré, a French billionaire and media tycoon. He’s best known for building a powerful media empire and for reshaping editorial lines across French media and publishing, pushing them toward far-right and pro-Kremlin positions.

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Born in 1952 in Boulogne-Billancourt to a family of industrialists, Vincent studied law at Paris Nanterre University. He took over the family business and turned it into a sprawling conglomerate spanning logistics, port infrastructure in Africa, advertising, and media.

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Bolloré’s African logistics empire also became the subject of a long-running corruption investigation in France. Legal proceedings against Vincent Bolloré personally are still ongoing, with a trial planned in December, after a judge refused to approve a plea deal.

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Read 25 tweets
Jun 4
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll introduce an American conspiracy theorist, podcaster & antisemite, Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO). She’s best known for spreading conspiracy theories, attacking Ukraine, promoting pro-Kremlin BS, and becoming a favorite of Russian state media.

1/21 Image
Candace started her career as an intern at Vogue magazine but later moved into political commentary. Her early career focused on criticizing Republicans, calling their antics “bat-shit crazy.” In 2016, her blog even published an article about Trump’s penis size.

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That same year, she launched a doxxing website called SocialAutopsy. In response, people began posting Owens’s personal information online. During the controversy, she gained support from figures such as @Nero and @Cernovich. And just like that, she became a conservative.

3/21 Image
Read 23 tweets
May 27
In today’s Wumao Soup, we’ll talk about Taiwan, the sovereign country the Chinese Communist Party insists is not a country, but constantly threatens to invade just like a country, while the “antiwar” crowd is eagerly encouraging them to start that war, endangering millions.

1/20 Presidential Office Building, Taipei, Taiwan https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm4GOcdvZbi/
Taiwan is a country, a state. It has its own territory, government, army, police, courts, taxes, passports and elections, just like any other country.

The only difference? Its neighbor, imperialist China, wants to invade it, and other countries try to please the big bully.

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Taiwan’s official name is the Republic of China, or ROC. The ROC was founded in 1912, after the fall of the Qing dynasty. The People’s Republic of China, or PRC, was founded by democidal dictator Mao Zedong and his communist party, in 1949, after fighting against the ROC.

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Read 20 tweets
May 25
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll introduce Russian propaganda operations around military targets like Starobilsk. For over a decade, the Kremlin has used similar strategies, combining crisis actors, “independent journalists” and fabricated evidence.

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First, let’s go back to 2014. Russia funded separatist groups and sent its mercenaries to Donbas, which led to the creation of two puppet states, Donetsk and Luhansk, governed by Russian propagandists and soldiers like Igor Girkin.

2/13
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The fake genocide was touted as one of the main reasons for Russia’s war during the early stages of the full-scale invasion, and the claim was made even by Putin himself. Before his mutiny, late Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said that all this was fabricated bullshit.

3/13
Read 14 tweets
May 1
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 Hasan Piker in Havana, Cuba
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.

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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.

3/20

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Read 22 tweets
Apr 26
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.Image
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.
Read 4 tweets

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