Soup 32, December 2, 2022
Zelenskyy disinfo
In today’s Vatnik Soup and in the 2nd edition of “You pronounced this nonsense, not me”, I’ll introduce some of the outlandish lies and disinformation regarding Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and how he has managed to counter these smear campaigns.
Since day one of the invasion he’s been the #1 target for Russian propaganda — why? Because Russia lost their own man, Viktor Yanukovych, during the Euromaidan uprising. Yanukovych fled Kyiv and is now living in exile in Russia:
Viktor YanukovychAt the beginning of the war, Putin assumed that Zelenskyy, a man mostly known for his acting career, would quickly fold and leave Ukraine. Immediately after Russia’s full-scale invasion had begun, the Kremlin started spreading disinfo that Zelenskyy had already fled from Ukraine to Poland.
Soon after these accusations, Ukrainian leadership, including Zelenskyy, published a video from the streets of Kyiv to fight this propaganda campaign. This video quickly became one of the biggest morale boosters for Ukraine.
Soon after one of the worst deepfake videos ever produced was published. In this video, “Zelenskyy” called for his soldiers to lay down their arms. Hackers managed to send this video on Ukrainian national TV too and the news spread quickly on social network VKontakte.
In July, 2022, hackers hacked into a Ukrainian radio station and sent a message that Zelenskyy was hospitalized and was in intensive care. Again, Zelenskyy published a rebuttal and said that he was well.
After the Russians realized that none of these approaches would work, they started the now infamous drug addict accusations: a fake video of Zelenskyy having cocaine on his desk surfaced and spread like a wildfire.
This claim was supported by another edited video of Zelenskyy “praising cocaine” (he was actually talking about coffee & exercise). The outlet that did the original interview has denied these claims, too:
У соцмережах спотворили інтер…
Fringe pro-Putin bloggers such as Max Blumenthal are still desperately trying to push this silly narrative from time to time:
On October 10th, another claim about Zelenskyy leaving Kyiv to escape from bombings surfaced on Telegram:
Yet again, Mr. Zelenskyy made a rebuttal video from the centre of Kyiv:
Yet again, Mr. Zelenskyy made a rebuttal video from the centre of Kyiv:
Володимир Зеленський on Insta…
Another popular claim regarding Zelenskyy is that he’s a billionaire. Lee Stranahan was arguing this already back in April 2022:
Forbes Ukraine has estimated his wealth to be around $20 million, with his company Kvartal 95 listed as his main source of income.
Forbes Ukraine has estimated his wealth to be around $20 million, with his company Kvartal 95 listed as his main source of income.
Pandora Papers revealed that Zelenskyy has offshore companies abroad, but so do many others: over 200 Finns were named in these leaks. And of course Putin and Timchenko were also there:
Zelenskyy has been quick and effective at countering any disinformation Russia tries to spread about him.
He does this by effectively using various social media channels, but I’m sure that we will see even more Kremlin-related bullshit coming in the following months.
He does this by effectively using various social media channels, but I’m sure that we will see even more Kremlin-related bullshit coming in the following months.