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Matthew Kupfer Profile picture
Matthew Kupfer
@Matthew_Kupfer
Investigative & OSINT journalist, @VOANews. Mostly #Ukraine & #Russia. Ex: @SFStandard @OCCRP @KyivPost @MoscowTimes. Opinions mine, not VOA's. RT ≠ endorsement
2 subscribers
Jun 6 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
🧵Update on the killing of Ramzan Daraev, a Chechen immigrant from #Russia who was shot by a US serviceperson in North Carolina.

Some reporting tied his shooting to concerns about foreign surveillance of US forces.

That increasingly appears unlikely. golosameriki.com/a/fort-liberty… Fox News reporting suggested that Daraev was in the US illegally and may have used a telephoto lens to photograph a US serviceperson's house near Carthage, NC.

Police noted that, despite reportedly working for a utilities company, Daraev had no uniform or equipment.

However...
May 9 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
NEW: You may have heard of #Russia's "Doppelganger" #disinformation campaign targeting the US, EU, #Ukraine & Latin America.

I dug into the background of the man allegedly behind it, political consultant Ilya Gambashidze.

Here's what I found. 🧵voanews.com/a/investigatio… Background: In March, the US Treasury sanctioned Gambashidze, business partner Nikolai Tupikin, and his 2 companies for creating cloned news & government sites and fake social media accounts and using them for pro-Kremlin #disinformation and propaganda. home.treasury.gov/news/press-rel…
Mar 19 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
This week, my wife and I are celebrating our anniversary. My parents ordered us a very practical, thoughtful gift on Amazon: a crockpot and a crockpot cookbook.

We're thrilled. There's just one minor issue: I'm pretty sure the cookbook was written by an AI... 🧵 Here's the book: "The Complete Crockpot Cookbook for Beginners" for 2024 (gotta keep up with crockpot innovations) by Luisa Florence.

All looks good — except for 2,000 days, which seems kinda arbitrary and a few to many for one year. But no big deal. Image
Dec 7, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
There's this conspiracy theory-like narrative about #Covid19 that claims that the CDC sold out to capitalism and decided to sacrifice us at the altar of the economy.

The people pushing this narrative appear to believe an economy is something optional, like dining indoors. I wouldn't mind this so much, except that it seems to view the role of public opinion in Covid policy (people don't agree to mask, socially distance, or be unemployed forever) as something inconsequential.

I'm still masking in most places and *I* think this is nuts.
Oct 12, 2022 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Attending the @sfstandard-organized debate between District 8 supervisor Rafael Mandelman and challenger Kate Stoia.

So far, both presenting themselves as the voice of grievance against the #SanFrancisco Board of Supervisors — Stoia more so, but both. Image Mandelman says most people in #SanFrancisco understand we need more affordable housing *and* more market rate housing, but that the Board of Supervisors doesn’t seem to agree.
Jun 17, 2022 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
Not sure even the best Russian Studies grad can explain this in a few tweets.

The short answer: For complex reasons, Russian Orthodox Christianity and Soviet nostalgia became fused in #Russia and among other Russia-oriented populations in the ex-USSR. In #Russia, there is a politically expedient, post-Soviet tendency to portray the imperial, Soviet, and independence eras as a continuum, glossing over the contradictions.

That allows for the situation described (correctly) in this tweet.
May 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Alisa, age 4, arrived in Zaporizhia, #Ukraine alone on an evacuation bus from Mariupol.

She and her mother Viktoria Obidina, a military medic, were evacuated from Azovstal. But #Russia-backed militants detained Viktoria along the way. She's now likely in a "filtration camp." In April, a video of Alisa saying she wanted to be evacuated made the rounds on social media. Then journalist Nataliya Nagorna encountered her on the evacuation bus and was shocked to find she was alone.

Ukrainians online are demanding her mother be freed. #повернітьАлісімаму
Apr 1, 2022 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
🧵Lots to parse here, but it seems significant.

"#Kazakhstan respects the territorial integrity of #Ukraine. We did not recognise and will not recognise the Crimea situation and neither the Donbas situation because the UN does not recognise them." euractiv.com/section/centra… First, it's clear that #Kazakhstan is playing defense here, concerned about the possibility that it could face sanctions. The fact this message is directed at Europe (in Euractiv) drives that point home.
Mar 31, 2022 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
My latest with @adalatseeker and @boshikh for @OCCRP: We tracked down the secretive relative of #Turkmenistan's longtime dictator who controls the country's monopoly mobile phone operator. How secretive is Shyhmyrat Shaharliyev, the director of #Turkmenistan's monopoly mobile operator Altyn Asyr (TMCell)? He has never made a public appearance as director!

During most of the investigation, we only had an image of his torso (the man at the center) from social media.
Mar 29, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
🧵 Assuming this audio is real, there's an interesting detail here: The girlfriend is very concerned by her boyfriend drinking heavily in #Ukraine. Later, the soldier mentions he "met another Tuvan." What's the connection? Tuva is a remote ethnic republic in #Russia. It is a culturally fascinating place, but also very poor. Alcoholism is a serious problem.

A 2019 study found Tuva had among the most serious alcohol problems in Russia and the highest number of "accidental poisonings" of any region.
Mar 13, 2022 • 8 tweets • 6 min read
🧵🧵🧵I don't like to promote unnecessary optimism about #Russia's war in #Ukraine, but there have been several noteworthy developments today.

1) Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak told the Russian Kommersant newspaper about progress in peace talks. 2) Lawmaker Leonid Slutsky, a member of #Russia's delegation, echoed these statements, saying the progress could grow into a "unified position" in the coming days.
Mar 12, 2022 • 9 tweets • 7 min read
🧵🧵🧵Did #Israel PM Naftali Bennett push the Ukrainian government to capitulate to #Russia? Zelensky's administration now denies this. I wanted to give a few reasons why I — a person who spent 4 years covering #Ukraine — was a bit skeptical. For background: #Ukraine is a place where many of #Russia's current and previous demands — for example, neutrality, bilingualism — are unacceptable for reasons not always apparent to outsiders. Additionally, the vast majority of Ukrainians believe their country will win this war.
Mar 11, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
🧵Краткое объсянение очередного, позорного фейка об #Украина — в этот раз, от посольства России в Великобритании.

Вчера посольство опубликовало твит о том, что девушка, пережившая авиаудар по роддому в Мариуполе, якобы была так называемой "кризисной актрисой". Это ложь. Опровергну твит по пунктам.

1) "Марианна Подгурская – бьюти-блогер":
Оказывается, Марианна Подгурская действительно вела бьюти-блог. Но по Инстаграму мы видим, что она живет в Мариуполе и она беременна.
Mar 10, 2022 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
Shameful lies! 1) Podgurskaya's Instagram shows A) she's from Mariupol & B) her husbanded posted a photo in January where she is visibly pregnant.

2) Evgeniy Maloletka is a well-known photojournalist from #Ukraine who was covering the war in Mariupol. 3) She is no more a "beauty blogger" than millions of other young women online. #Russia wants to imply that she's a crisis actor. In reality, she's an ordinary victim of the bombing.

@Twitter Why do you allow the Embassy's tweet to stay up? It's vile #disinformation.
Feb 26, 2022 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
🧵#Ukraine is using the Telegram messenger very effectively to communicate with the public during this war. Throughout the day, multiple official channels send out updates: warnings of imminent airstrikes, news on curfews, calls for public vigilance against saboteurs... 2) Some of this "infrastructure" was built over the past two years as a result of the #COVID19 pandemic, when #Ukraine used the channels to update the public on case numbers, changes in quarantine restrictions, and public health news.
Feb 24, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
March for #Ukraine on Shota Rustaveli Street in central Tbilisi. Image The march in Tbilisi was big. The anthems of #Ukraine & Georgia played the whole time, interspersed w/ Reagan's voice saying: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw #Russia forever. We begin bombing in 5 minutes." Image
Feb 24, 2022 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
🧵When @Tom_deWaal and I wrote this article in 2014, I never could have imagined that this rhetoric — "genocide" & "Nazis" — would be used by #Russia to launch a full-blown war on #Ukraine (despite the annexation of Crimea & occupation of Donbas in 2014). carnegieendowment.org/2014/07/28/cry… 2) Today on Instagram, I saw they had added a notification informing me that someone's pseudo-intellectual parable about red & black ants was actually disinformation.

Good work. But how do you disprove Putin's narrative for its believers? snopes.com/fact-check/bla…
Apr 17, 2021 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
With everything happening in Russia, I want to reiterate: the Kremlin isn't playing chess, while the US/West plays checkers. This metaphor encourages people to misunderstand what's actually going on.

In reality, everyone is playing chess, but #Russia is making up its own rules. What do I mean? I've said this before, but one of the defining features of Putin's #Russia is its willingness to break rules. I think we cannot disconnect this from the fact that it is not a democratic polity.
Jun 12, 2020 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
A few thoughts on @IsaacDovere's interesting story on OAN's claims that it has recordings of Biden talking with officials in #Ukraine.

I am skeptical of the claim that #Russia is involved in these recordings. Sure, it's possible. Why I doubt it (THREAD):
theatlantic.com/politics/archi… 1) On May 19, Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach released recordings from 2016 of Biden talking with President Poroshenko. For all Derkach's claims (Burisma, Hunter Biden, Burisma), there actually wasn't anything new there.

It was a giant nothingburger. kyivpost.com/ukraine-politi…
May 21, 2019 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD. Fascinating scoop from @NBCNews: associates of Yevgeny Prigozhin, man behind #Russia's troll factory, had a plan to radicalize Afro-Americans to fight for a black state in the US south. It is many things:
1) frightening
2) improbable
3) indicative
nbcnews.com/news/world/rus… 1) Frightening: Yes, it is scary because it shows that Prigozhin's people are theoretically willing to stoke violence (war) in the United States to advance their commercial goals (Prigozhin is, effectively, a businessman making money off the Russian state budget).
Apr 21, 2019 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
A few thoughts on Zelenskiy's victory in #UkraineElections2019:
1) Personal views on Zelenskiy aside, this is a win for Ukrainian democracy, and therefore for #Ukraine. Poroshenko admits as much.
2) It shows both the people & the state can hold free, fair, competitive elections. 3) It shows the country is much less divided than many believe: over 70% voted for Zelenskiy. Even in 1st round, the old "East vs. West" divide was limited to a few regions.
4) It emphasizes the degree to which Ukrainian voters are not arch-nationalists, but pragmatists.