In today’s #vatnik soup I’ll be introducing an American journalist, author and a podcaster, Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled). Ames is best-known for being the editor of the eXile tabloid in Moscow between 1997 and 2008, and for co-hosting the Radio War Nerd podcast.

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Mark established the eXile in 1997 while living in Moscow. Shortly after starting it, he hired Matt Taibbi to work with him. The tabloid consisted of articles mainly on politics, organized crime, prostitution, sex and drug use.

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In 2000 Taibbi and Ames published a book about their adventures in Russia called “The eXile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia”. Based on an Observer interview from 2000 Ames quickly delved into sexual escapades with Russian ladies, stating that getting attention...

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...from Russian girls was something new, and he stated that “I didn’t even think of women anymore because they could just smell failure on me”. Then, he continued that in Russia “It was pretty much just fuck whoever you wanted to”. Based on Taibbi, Ames was...

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..."universally loathed in the Moscow foreign community".

"Tens of millions of people live in dire circumstances, stranded in the center of the world’s largest continent, with little hope of going anywhere, " Mark claimed."Which means–sexual opportunity for me”, he continued.5/16

Then he claimed that “Russian women, especially on the first date, expect you to rape them”, and that “it took me a while to learn you really have to force Russian girls, and that’s what they want, it’s like a mock rape.”

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In their book, Ames described another scenario where he had sex with a pregnant 15-year old girl. He then wrote: “Right then my pervometer needle hit the red. I had to have her, even if she was homely.” In the book, he also threatened to kill a pregnant Russian girl if ...

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... she didn’t do an abortion. Their book was described as “nonfiction” but both Taibbi and Ames later said, on many, many occasions, that the whole thing written as a satire. Incidentally, Mark’s ex-girlfriend has called him a “fucking psychopath”.

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Why write about all this, if not to defame Mark? Because Russia has an age-old strategy that they’ve been using effectively for decades:kompromat.Spending 10 years in Russia, using drugs & having casual sex to me seems like a perfect scenario for becoming a target of blackmail.9/16

When it comes to his views on Russia, Ukraine and the war, we can clearly see where Mark stands. He masks his pro-Russian stance as anti-imperialism and hate for the CIA and the “neocons”.

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Ames blamed the US for most of Russia’s problems, including the chaotic times during the 90’s, Putin’s election rigging and the rise of the far-right within Putin’s government. Ames was also rejoicing over Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008.

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Like a good Putin’s puppy, he likes to talk about the “Azon nationalists” and “Banderites”. He’s called the Yuschenko regime “hard-line, monocultural, nationalistic”. He criticized Zelenskyy for publishing the arrest picture of Viktor Medvedchuk, ...

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Putin’s old pal who funded false flag operations and large media operations to help Yanukovych at the presidential election already back in 2004. In the eXile, Ames has often written about a Russian politician Eduard Limonov who founded the National Bolshevik Party...

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...together with Aleksandr Dugin and Yegor Letov in
1993.

John Dolan and Mark Ames have featured the pro-Russian Grayzone blogger Max Blumenthal in their War Nerd podcast. They were also the first people to interview Seymour Hersh after the publication of his fictitious...14/16

...story on the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. Ames has also attacked the Bellingcat multiple times, stating that they’re funded by the CIA and blamed them smearing Seymour Hersh already back in 2017 after Hersh’s article “Trump’s Red Line”.

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Ames’ audience is of course the Americans. He’s trying to convince people, that the US leadership (excluding Trump) has meddled with Russia & Ukraine for too long, and that the military aid should be stopped.He barely speaks of Russia’s imperialism and their barbaric history.16/16