Vatnik Soup

Fighting online disinformation since 2022.

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce an Italian journalist and political commentator, Marco Travaglio (@marcotravaglio). He’s best known for being the most prominent pro-Russian voice in Italy and for spreading Russian disinformation almost every day on Italian TV.

1/22

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

@atrupar I mean

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

I am astonished they found a White House press secretary worse than Karoline Leavitt, yet here she is.

Her first briefing lasted 13 minutes and she answered three questions.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

holy shit -- Zacharia took 3 questions and then wrapped it up. The whole press briefing was under 30 minutes. What a disaster.

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

@atrupar This is gonna be both fun and sad.

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

@atrupar I give her two months.

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

The little green men are here: a newly emerged Belarusian extremist group called “Black Rus” has claimed responsibility for the border incidents in Latvia.

Masked individuals allegedly threatened Latvian soldiers, helped push migrants towards the border, entered Latvian territory, damaged electrical equipment and stole surveillance cameras.

"Black Rus", which calls for the forced subjugation of Ukraine and the unification of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, has promised further sabotage operations against NATO countries.

This is literally a Russian psyop/military operation.

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

Happy birthday Marco Travaglio!

[Vatnik Soup Italia @vatniksoup_it]

Buon compleanno, Marco! 🎂

Per l’occasione, ti abbiamo preparato una zuppa fatta in casa con amore e ingredienti veri, soprattutto fatti: non ci sei abituato.

Speriamo che apprezzi il gesto. D’altronde, ormai sei nel pantheon dei filorussi del pianeta: è giusto celebrare!

1/25

[Vatnik Soup Italia @vatniksoup_it]

Buon compleanno, Marco! 🎂

Per l’occasione, ti abbiamo preparato una zuppa fatta in casa con amore e ingredienti veri, soprattutto fatti: non ci sei abituato.

Speriamo che apprezzi il gesto. D’altronde, ormai sei nel pantheon dei filorussi del pianeta: è giusto celebrare!

1/25

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

Apparently it is now allowed to advertise bot/troll farms on X.

Also goes to show how easy it actually is to manipulate social media platforms regardless of what their owners say.

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

This is the kind of people Russia is sending to fight in Ukraine.

Russia is a terrorist state.

[Rubizh @RubizhBrigade]

Russian man Yakov Maiboroda KILLED his INFANT daughter, GROUND her up, then joined Russian army and got turned into a mincemeat himself

This is NOT a joke. No amount of Ukrainian propaganda can make this shit up. Source below👇

#Rubizh

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

@Remi53637447

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, le French vatnique

[Vatnik Soup en français @vatniksoup_fr]

https://t.co/XVcokUNCpZ

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

@CapecodI ¿El Mélenchon?

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

According to Trump, China and Russia are helping Iran at a "very low level."

Russia is helping Iran through targeting intelligence, drone technology, weapons cooperation and economic support.

In the current war, the Kremlin has literally helped Iran kill US soldiers.

[Vatnik Soup en français @vatniksoup_fr]

https://t.co/XVcokUNCpZ

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

@greatplainswest Historically they have plenty of vatniks (Mick Wallace, Clare Daly, etc.), strong pro-Palestine movement, campaigning against Irish alumina...

Also EU country, lots of divisive topics that can be used to sway votes.

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

The topic of the day has been the strikes on Yandex data centers and whether they affect the Russian bot/troll army.

There have been some initial research done on this, and the most interesting finding comes from Reddit: after the strikes, many US-related subreddits lost a lot of traffic. Same happened in German and Irish subreddits.

As most of you know, Reddit is one of the most popular sources of information for LLMs, and I have zero doubt that Russians are actively trying to steer conversations across the platform to favor their narratives.

Full analysis and methodology here:
https://t.co/8iQXbpck4F

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

@perevaa There was some level of normalization and comparison to previous dates.

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

And this is also an important post:

https://t.co/Ekg942uy3K

[bot blocker | блокировщик ботов @antibot4navalny]

To those implying that Kremlin-controlled social media bot/troll farms became silent after Ukraine hit a Yandex data center, posting this CloudFare chart (https://t.co/9novJa0Lss):

Hate to disappoint you all ⤵️

[Vatnik Soup @vatnik_soup]

We still have to be skeptical about both the effect and the scale of the outage of the Yandex data centers. Here is one analysis that didn't find any change in posting frequency:

https://t.co/iWp5fxAY9b

[Res Futura Data House @Polityka_wSieci]

Dane z naszego nasluchu siatki rusnet (około 500 kont) działającej w 🇵🇱 social media jednoznacznie nie potwierdzają spadku narracyjnej aktywności z powodu uszkodzenia infrastruktury #Yandex Klasyczny weekend