In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Russian propagandist and blogger, Nina “Nina Byzantina” Kouprianova (@NinaByzantina). She’s best-known for her full support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for marrying neo-Nazis, and for translating fascist philosophers.

1/20

Kouprianova was born in Moscow in the late 80s, when the collapse of the USSR was just around the corner. She’s blamed Jeffrey Sachs, Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton for ruining Russia in the 90s, neatly forgetting the involvement of oligarchs & various criminal organizations.
2/20

Nina met Richard Spencer, an American neo-Nazi, conspiracy theorist and general clown, back in 2009. He outright refuses to talk about Richard’s tendencies to drift towards far-right policies. Richard was already at this point at the deep end - he was fired from...

3/20

...the American Conservative for being “a bit extreme” for the magazine. She finally married Spencer in Niagara Falls in 2010, and their fairy tale lasted until around 2016, when Spencer announced their separation in a Washington Post article.

4/20

Being married to a literal neo-Nazi for several years, Kouprianova refuses to put any labels on herself. She’s said that she’s “sympathetic” toward movements that “challenge the dominant and globally oriented post-Liberal ideology, ” probably meaning something...

5/20

...along the lines of “Fuck the US”.

She later compared his ex-husband’s treatment to Stalinist purges in the USSR in an article she wrote for the local newspaper. After their separation, she accused Spencer of physical abuse.

6/20

In order to distance herself from any far-right affiliations, Kouprianova has translated the works of a political philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, who’s best known for his neo-fascist worldview and for his geopolitics, where eastern Ukraine is considered to “Novorossiya”, ...

7/20

...an essential part of the Russian empire. On her webpage, Nina lists Dugin’s books as only book translations she’s ever done. Dugin is a central figure in Russian imperialism, and his 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics has been considered to be a “blueprint” of Russian..
8/20

...invasions in the 21st century. Dugin also started networking with American neo-Nazi groups around 2015, while Kouprianova and Spencer were still unhappily married. He hosted an online lecture at the founding of the neo-Nazi group, US Traditionalist Worker Party.

9/20

During the same year, he gave a speech titled “American Liberalism Must Be Destroyed” at an event organized by another neo-Nazi, Preston Wiginton. Wiginton is best-known for winning the “Strongest Skinhead” contest at a skinhead festival called Hammerfest in 2005.

10/20

According to Kouprianova, Putin has chosen the path of “healthy debate”, papering over the killings or locking up of journalists and all of political opposition. Since 2014, she’s called the conflict in Eastern Ukraine a “genocide” conducted by the Ukrainians.

11/20

To Nina, Russia’s invasion has always been a “liberation war”, while quoting things like “There are no separate Russia or Ukraine, but one Holy Rus.” As is tradition, she’s called the 2014 Revolution of Dignity a “Washington- and Brussels-backed regime change”...

12/20

...and “bloody coup d’état”, completely disregarding the huge Russian influence in the process.

She’s called the Russian interference in 2016 US election a “hysterical narrative”.

13/20

Kouprianova has spread various conspiracy theories related to the Ukrainian Army, including organ trading and of course the “Ukrainian Nazis” (the “wrong kind” of Nazis, I guess). It’s time to ask this question again: If the reason for the war in Ukraine was to...

14/20

.."denazify" it, why did Putin trade all the Azov Brigade leaders to Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk? Wasn’t the whole idea of the war to get rid (and possibly execute) the “evil Nazi Banderites”? Is this just some kind of 4-D chess that only Putin and Trump understands?15/20

She also has lots of love for PMC Wagner, the mercenary company best-known for demolishing Bakhmut, but also recognized for the rapes and mass murder they’ve conducted in the African states. Apparently, putting them on list of terrorists is a sign of their “success”.

16/20

As a propagandist, “Nina Byzantina” is subpar - her YouTube videos garner only hundreds of views (she has less subscribers than me, and I have published 0 videos), her TG channel has less than 100 followers, and her Twitter posts have quite low engagement.

17/20

She’s often basing her arguments on history ("Russian and Ukrainian people are one"), naturally cherry-picking the events that fit to her (and Kremlin’s) narrative. She’s decorating & romanticizing it all with “Russian traditionalism”, meaning family values and all that jazz.
18/20

With all this hype around Russia, I only assume that Nina has moved back to Moscow, now that she’s separated from Richard Spencer and allegedly has no longer reason to remain in the United States, the country she seems to...

19/20

...so much despise. As she’s constantly praising Putin and her motherland, you’d assume that she had gone back to Moscow already.

She’s gone back to Russia, right?

20/20

It’s time for a little dessert: a little bird on Twitter told me that while living in Toronto, Nina was already deeply connected to the far-right movement. Apparently she dated a skinhead & enjoyed going to satanic metal concerts, being the religious person she is.

Hey Richard!