🧵… Beyond Twitter, a lot has been happening in support of Ukraine across the Baltic nations.

(Actually, a lot of NAFO types here never bothered with Twitter even before it turned to shit.)

Over in the real world, a key aim is boosting defence production in our countries & Ukraine.

Some things look a lot clearer in hindsight.

That’s especially true for russian disinformation. Its peddlers have to keep up with ever changing narratives so they hope you’re too distracted by new lies to hold them to account for the old lies.

But let’s, for a moment, step away from current bullshit & rewind exactly 2 years.

Settle in. This is gonna be a LONG one, but I think there are key lessons to learn. 🧵
⏪ It’s November 2021.

This was the period in which the continued build up of russia’s invasion force became so impossible to ignore that many people internationally first heard concerns predicting the impending invasion.

There was lots of good journalism and analysis back then going into detail about why it appeared russia was planning an invasion and what the world could urgently do to deter it.

Russia ridiculed the warnings. As Business Insider reported:

‘Russia says it’s not planning an invasion as US and others raise concerns about troop buildup near Ukraine’.

A kremlin spokesperson said that “the movement of troops on our territory shouldn’t be a cause for anyone’s concern” and any suggestion it was planning to invade Ukraine [further] was a “hollow and unfounded attempt to incite tensions”, adding “russia doesn’t threaten anyone”.

These denials were crucial, not just for the element of surprise against Ukraine, but also to bypass both global and domestic outrage building in advance to stop the war and so that russia could later attempt to craft its propaganda narrative about how it had been provoked once its invasion force was in place.

As you can probably guess, ‘others’ from the headline included the Baltic countries. Our leaders were urgently warning the world to deter russian aggression by standing with Ukraine and making clear the cost to russia of a wider war.

But, despite the massive invasion force being built up around Ukraine by an aggressor state that had already partially invaded Ukraine, there was also fairly widespread doubt building internationally too about whether the invasion force was an invasion force and so whether any attempt at deterrence was needed.

I spent some time looking through articles and tweets that summarise public perceptions and how it was being influenced from November into December 2021.

A number of “russia experts” - mostly former moscow correspondents who boosted each other online and have some curious connections offline - had quite a significant influence while ridiculing anyone concerned about russia’s threat. Their behaviour worked out exactly in the interests of the kremlin, which was desperate to deceive the world about its invasion plans.

In retrospect, their writings clearly have very close similarities with that of Walter Duranty back in the 1930s.

They ridicule reports about russia we now know were accurate, they smear the authors of those reports as propagandists, and they minimise Eastern European perspectives that warned about russia in ways that, again, we now know were accurate. Only fellow “russia experts” from russia and westerners who have spent time as moscow correspondents should be listened to, they heavily implied (even though they proved to be 100% wrong).

Oh, and this was also the height of the human trafficking operation organised through Belarus as part of hybrid warfare against Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

These same “russia experts” were also busy pouring doubt on suggestions russia was fuelling it, which of course we know today is as absurd as them saying russia wouldn’t invade.

Next tweet, some key observations.

“Russia is threatened by NATO!”
“Russia is ready to fight NATO if we cross its red lines!”

Meanwhile, in reality, this is russia removing significant amounts of defence equipment from the location it would be most needed in a war against NATO. 🤔
Military cargo flights recently reached a three year high between the territory that russia calls kaliningrad and the rest of russia. Russia has deliberately obscured the end location of these flights. However, great OSINT accounts like @auonsson and also the UK’s intelligence update were able to reveal that the flights were very likely removing air defence systems and other equipment and transporting it to be used in russia’s war against Ukraine.

Since this was published yesterday, I’ve spoken to some of the most active supporters of Ukraine actually involved in its fight for freedom.

Many of them had the same reaction to Konstantin Kisin:

“Who?” 🤷‍♂️

As for the minority that have heard of him, they’ve always regarded him as a voice for the Kremlin.

Since the very earliest days of russia’s full scale war, he’s been publicly promoting key russian narratives. He said the war must end in a win for putin, which must at least include rewarding russia with Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, which he lied no Ukrainians believed could ever be liberated anyway. The alternative, he claimed, would be WW3 because putin must never be backed into a corner and russians would never rise up against him.

He said all that in March 2022 on British TV.

Now he thinks he’s the main character supporting Ukraine. And note that he still uses russian imperial spelling for Ukrainian cities.

This level of tone deaf self-absorption while doing nothing to help Ukraine and repeating the russian imperial perspective is familiar. It’s characteristic of so much of the russian “opposition” and so many “independent”russian commentators with dodgy Kremlin connections.

You might be wondering: does Kisin, by any chance, have any connections to russia too?

Yes. He’s the Moscow-born son of a senior russian former official.

Earlier this week, I tweeted about how the Kremlin is now pushing all of its assets to call for a “peace deal”, as can clearly be seen with its troll accounts, many of which have abruptly switched from salivating over russia aggression to posing as modern Ghandis. Now many useful idiots are joining in.

Russia wants a pause to consolidate control of occupied territories while re-arming for a wider war - as it always does. At the very least, it wants to promote the perception that the country being invaded and subjected to genocide is the one being unreasonable in order to undermine support that would also help russia escalate its war.

There is only one war that Kisin really cares about and that’s the culture war where he does his grifting while promoting other fringe voices - many of whom are openly pro-russia.

So there are now two articles currently being heavily promoted by pro-war kremlin accounts and other russia-sympathising public figures.

One is written by moscow-born Simon Shuster. The other is written by moscow-born Konstantin Kisin. Both have a troubling history of promoting absurd kremlin narratives.

While much of this is predictable, if I was to write a parody about how russia would promote this narrative then using the Moscow-born culture warrior son of a senior russian former official writing a pompous self-absorbed statement then I would have considered this a bit too comically exaggerated.

As it happens, in addition to being a “russia expert”, Kisin identifies as a comedian - to the confusion of people who have seen his shows. Following poor reviews, he has said his comedy ‘career’ is currently on pause. And yet it seems he’s already trying to escalate his attempts at comedy.
This is him in March 2022.

The audacity of now declaring himself one of the most vocal supporters of Ukraine.

We should actually start using “a poor waif in his underwear” as an English expression but for people who blow their cover as Kremlin propagandists.

Someone please add it to Urban dictionary.

Let’s run through some examples of its usage. Feel free to add your own. 🧵 “The tech mogul, outlining his “peace plan” that would reward russian aggression, inadvertently exposed himself as a poor waif in his underwear by using the phrase ‘Khrushchev’s mistake’, which only appeared in russian propaganda.”

OMG. Seymour Hersh’s handler really messed up.

The “anonymous US official” supposed to be briefing Hersh used a russian expression (мальчик в трусиках) that English speakers don’t use. 😂 Other Kremlin propagandists are now trying to fix the quote themselves but still can’t make it sound like convincing English. 😂

Did… did Vladimir Putin write this headline? Saved you a click: The article is based largely on the fact that regime change in russia isn’t US policy.

But what country except russia has a policy of regime change for any other country?

Might as well say the world isn’t ready to see Justin Trudeau ousted.

This is the same Stephen Wertheim who argued just before Russia’s full scale invasion that the ‘Ukraine crisis’ could be diffused by… limiting the export of defensive weapons to Ukraine.

From his December 2021 opinion piece:

“Depriving Ukraine of armaments would weaken its… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… (Russia has, of course, already signed numerous international agreements to respect Ukraine’s independence - along with things like not changing borders by force, not committing genocide and war crimes, etc)

But let’s look at his latest piece anyway.

14 June.

It’s a date seared into our memories. The start of Moscow’s mass deportations in Baltic countries.

Today flags fly are raised, candles & black ribbons line railway platforms, victim names are read. Here’s Tallinn’s Freedom Square.

🧵 on what the world needs to know… From 1941, soviet soldiers in trucks snatched more than 200,000 people in the occupied Baltic countries - often at night - packed them into cattle wagons & dispersed them to labour camps across russia. Many died on the way or shortly after arrival from hunger, cold, & brutality.

Sport is heavily exploited for Russian propaganda, even when its athletes are supposedly ‘neutral’.

IOC chief Thomas Bach has a track record of bad takes in support of Russia at the Olympics - while it attempts to annihilate a participating nation.

Let’s dive in. 🧵 Bach began his career as a fencer. He won Olympic gold as part of West Germany’s team in 1976.

However, he’d soon be immersed in a political battle, unsuccessfully leading opposition to the boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

For decades, russian chauvinism has dominated much of the “Russia expert” industry, clouding the world’s understanding of Russia’s continued imperialism.

I know I already posted this screenshot but I’m still staggered by how obvious a giveaway it is about their attitudes.

🧵… Dr Radchenko believes that the West should ignore Ukraine & the Baltics when they have the audacity to talk about international law.

Ukrainian victory & prosecution of war crimes is - in his “considered opinion” offered to the Estonian PM - just “blah, blah, blah”.

You may have noticed there’s a lot of organisations around the world with peaceful-sounding names that keep popping up to support russia’s war aims.

A lot of you asked me to tweet about one of them this week.

But let’s first rewind a bit to how their story started. 🧵 In the aftermath of WW2, the World Peace Council was formed as a (supposedly) spontaneous initiative of intellectuals across Europe campaigning against war & imperialism.

Sounds noble.

But that origin story doesn’t quite check out. And their definition of ‘peace’ is a bit odd.

Ok, I’ve found the very worst take of the day.

‘The reason people don’t like genocidal imperialism as it tries to rip apart international law based on the post-WW2 consensus of sovereign nations co-existing is because …Russia is just so Christian.’ It’s not about Ukraine. It’s about us.”

That is beyond parody when it comes to Westsplaining the war against Ukraine.

Latvia has elected @edgarsrinkevics as President of the Republic.

He’s sharp, hugely respected as a long-serving Foreign Minister, always clear on containing russia, and is a staunch supporter of Ukraine “as long as necessary”.

(He’s also the world’s first openly-gay President) Rinkēvičs always tried to warn the world about russia’s threat and was actually in Ukraine already demonstrating solidarity when the full scale war was unleashed. He’s clear this is not just Putin’s war, but russia’s war.

#GoodBalticTakes
eng.lsm.lv/article/politi…

His broader point was that so-called “McDonalds countries” become so interconnected within the globalised capitalist system that it “makes warmongering risky and unpalatable to its people." Friedman was still giddy proclaiming the end of the Cold War - epitomised by scenes in 1990 of Russians enthusiastically queuing up under the Golden Arches.

Yugoslavia was actually the first communist country to get a McDonalds. We’ll return there.

Let’s talk about that really bad McDonalds take. 🧵

(No, not the one that’s been on Twitter the last few days, but the one that distorted perceptions of russia for the past few decades.) Back in 1996, Thomas Friedman came up with the ‘Golden Arches theory’.

It’s based around the claim that countries with McDonalds don’t go to war with each other.

He expanded it into a whole book in 1999.

By popular demand, here’s everything wrong with this video. 🧵 There’s one particularly glaring omission in this video about “Baltic Russians”…

…Baltic Russians!

They are not represented in the video or considered to have any perspectives of their own beyond Moscow’s propaganda.

Hence, this weird ‘vs 🇷🇺’ graphic.

If you had any sympathy left for Seymour Hersh, understand there is absolutely no way this isn’t deliberate Kremlin misinformation.

Any real journalist or anyone with a basic understanding of our region would recognise that. The headline is technically correct. Poland and the Baltic countries do want Zelenskyy to end the war. But they, like Ukraine, understand that Russia’s war only ends with the liberation of all Ukraine.

DW has quite an odd fixation with Soviet occupation monuments - always framing these stories as a debate between preserving or destroying history, which doesn’t represent what the interviewees even in their own report are actually explaining. 🧵

amp.dw.com/en/toppling-so… The article says they “journey” to the Baltic states as part of this report.

That basically means: ‘We didn’t travel there ourselves nor listen to local people but we threw together a few clips from stock footage with a narration based on our basic understanding.’

Ok, I listened to the whole interview & read reviews of the book.

There are layers to why this tweet is being rightly pilloried. The community note is the chef’s kiss.

Let me share a few thoughts. 🧵

https://twitter.com/novaramedia/status/1655256428012240898

There is much to debate in the analysis by Katja Hoyer. However, she does seem a thoughtful, well researching, reasonably balanced historian. She mainly wants to counter simplistic, one-sided narratives of East Germany.

Novara screwed her over quite a bit by doing exactly that.

The King and Queen of Sweden are on a state visit to Estonia this week.

Let's talk about relations with Sweden ...and why some here still talk about the "good old Swedish times". 🧵 If you only listen to vatniks on Twitter (not recommended), you'd think the Russian empire gifted education & development to the Baltics.

You may not be surprised to learn that reality does not correlate.