Foreword by Kyrylo Budanov
A Finnish mirror to the Ukrainian war.
Russian agents have always lied. They lied in the past. They are lying now. Times are changing, Russian lies are not. Surprisingly, in today’s fast-paced and transparent world of digital technologies, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish lies and disinformation from the truth. Especially when it is your eternal enemy who spreads this manipulation and who has reached great heights in the art of manipulation over a century of such activity.
The creative tandem of a well-known Finnish expert, Doctor of Philosophy in Interactive Technologies and Social Media Pekka Kallioniemi, and Danish historian and publisher Morten Hammeken, who specializes in modern history and geopolitics, will help solve this difficult task. Their joint work has produced this book called “Vatnik Soup”, which you are now holding in your hands.
Pekka Kallioniemi’s own family became victims of Russian informational provocation 85 years ago, and of Russian aggression later. Back then, a Russian armed invasion forced hundreds of thousands of Finns to leave their homes to the aggressor and become refugees, moving to the west of Finland. These people lost everything. Their destinies were broken. More than 25,000 Finns gave the most precious thing they had in defence of their Motherland – their lives. But they defended their independence.
In 2014, a similar fate befell tens of thousands of Ukrainians who had to flee from the Russian invaders, leaving Ukrainian Donetsk and Luhansk. Their houses were destroyed or occupied by Russians; their destinies broken. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the number of Ukrainian refugees rose to millions. But the Ukrainian army, like the army of Finland, managed to stop the enemy’s onslaught. We have paid a cost of incredible heroism and significant losses of our soldiers and officers.
Donetsk and Luhansk have in fact repeated the history of the second-largest Finnish city, Viipuri, which was occupied by Russian invaders following the 1939-40 war and became the “Russian” city of Vyborg.
Both in the war against Finland and in the war against Ukraine, Russian propaganda paved the way for the Russian tanks. Like today, attempts were made at dividing society, demoralizing civilians and military alike. The peaceful country of Suomi was accused of shelling the Soviet border. Russian propaganda called the Finns “invaders” and “white Finns.” Today, these same accusations are mirrored against peaceful Ukraine, which has been falsely accused for years of shelling Donetsk and Luhansk, labelling Ukrainians “invaders” and “Nazis”.
Strangely enough, many people in the world, both then and now, sincerely believed this propaganda delusion, which has been pouring into the information streams of Russian television, radio, and internet resources for decades. Those who live far from the Russian aggressor often don’t know his true face and intentions. But those of us who live in neighbouring countries, like Finland and Ukraine, see these intentions for what they are, and recognize the wholly cannibalistic essence of the aggressive “Russian bear.”
Modern war is a war of disinformation, special propaganda operations, sabotage, and chaos. These are methods that have long been studied in the Kremlin. To spread these lies and manipulations, the Russian state uses both local “useful idiots” and agents they recruit abroad. Some are worthless enough to follow the Kremlin’s script for free, some because of ideological beliefs, and some are just in it for the money. Corrupt politicians and officials are fertile grounds for Russian recruitment.
Finns remember well the traitor of their people, Kremlin’s agent Otto Kuusinen, who in 1939 created the puppet “Democratic Republic of Finland,” on whose behalf he signed the “Agreement on Aid and Cooperation” with the Russians. Kuusinen asked Stalin and Molotov for military assistance. This provided a formal pretext for a full-scale invasion of one million Russian soldiers into sovereign Finland. “Stalin, send in the troops!” Does that remind you of anything?
80 years later, in Ukraine, Russian political and military technologists repeated an almost identical special operation as the one they had conducted in Suomi. The creation of fake “republics” in Donetsk and Luhansk, the signing of “agreements” with their fake leaders (Ukraine had its own Kuusinens) and direct military aggression aimed at seizing the territory of independent Ukraine.
“Putin, send in the troops!” repeated as a refrain a little more than 8 decades after the end of the Russo-Finnish war. A new Russo-Ukrainian war has begun. It is noteworthy that in Donetsk, temporarily occupied by the Russians, there is now a street and an alley named after Otto Kuusinen, honouring the war of 1939–40. I assure you that they will be immediately renamed after the liberation of Donbas by the Ukrainian armed forces.
Let’s remember that any war begins with propaganda, information manipulation and brainwashing of the citizens of your country. Then Russian planes, tanks, and missiles follow the disinformers.
“Vatnik Soup” is a book about those who spread this Kremlin propaganda. From “leaders of public opinion” to influential politicians and businessmen who, in one way or another, for money or for ideological reasons, spread Putin’s and his criminal team’s narratives. This is a book for those who want to identify the Russian propaganda narratives, spread by these information agents. The main goal of every Russian propagandist is to create chaos, despair, and demoralization in a civilized society. If we can identify and neutralize these Kremlin’s information agents in time, we will protect our society, our countries, and the entire civilized world from the global attack of the Kremlin’s armed horde.
Kyrylo Budanov, Lieutenant General, Chief of the Defence Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine.