Vatnik Soup
Soup number212
Date29.07.2023
Twitter/XRead
Thread Reader AppRead
Thread Reader PDFRead
AudioListen
ProfessionInformation
Country of originN/A
Retweets2k
Likes4k
Views513k
Bookmarks
In other languages
NAFO 2 (de)
NAFO 2 (nl)
Related soups:

NAFO, part 2

In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll talk about #NAFO and its achievements. Pro-Kremlin accounts and Russian opposition often claim that NAFO is nothing but a harassment movement, but this statement couldn’t be further from the truth.

1/18 Image
Wikipedia describes NAFO as an “Internet meme and social media movement dedicated to countering Russian propaganda and disinformation”, but since its launch, the movement had a strong focus on crowdfunding the Ukrainian military and other pro-Ukrainian causes.

2/18 Image
The strength of NAFO stems from its de-centralized structure. There are no leaders or hierarchy, so any kind of character assassination becomes challenging.

This hasn’t stopped people from trying that, though, and the vatniks have grasped at straws and relentlessly...

3/18 Image
... attacked NAFO founder @Kama_Kamilia for his old tweets - to no avail, since the movement is stronger than ever. Since starting the movement, Kama has strongly emphasized that the focus should always be on NAFO, not on him.

4/18
Image
Image
NAFO has also divided into coordinated subgroups with different goals. Some accounts produce memes, some focus on donations, others do research and many ridicule and counter Russian disinformation. All this is done with just one goal in mind - to help Ukraine win the war.

5/18 Image
And that’s exactly why the movement is being constantly attacked:it is making a big difference with its fight-fire-with-fire tactic against Russian paid trolls & at the same time it aids the Ukrainian war effort. NAFO dogs also support each other by sharing people’s content.
6/18 Image
I know that NAFO has collected millions and millions to assist Ukraine, but my personal focus with #vatniksoup and in NAFO has been on researching pro-Kremlin narratives and people who spread them.

Check NAFO donations here:

7/18nafo-ofan.org/pages/nafo-ofa…
I was doing all this alone until April 2023, when I started collaborating with a NAFO research team to investigate a pro-Kremlin organization called Donbass Devushka. Its key figure pretended to be a “poor woman from Lugansk [sic]”, Ukraine. In reality she was a Sarah Bils, ...
8/18


Image
Image
Image
Image
..a former non-commissioned officer & Jersey girl with a terrible fake Russian accent. DD claimed they collected & donated money for humanitarian aid in Donbas, but no evidence of money going anywhere other than the owner’s pockets was never presented:
9/18
On 16 April 2023, the story was reported by the Wall Street Journal and the Donbass Devushka brand was quickly abandoned — but only for a while.

The DD case proved that Russia has a strong fifth column working in the west:

10/18 https://t.co/AZoJXhZNuc
Image
After the first NAFO summit, the movement caused controversy after the organizers brought an inflated shark onto the stage during the event. This was a reference to a Russian tourist killed by a shark in Egypt. Russian opposition and the Navalny team decided that instead...
11/18
Image
Image
...of discussing the ongoing war and thousands of Russian and Ukrainian youth dying in the front, this incident was much more important topic of discussion, thus demonstrating total tone-deafness to the whole conflict.

12/18 Image
For some reason, these same people were critical of Kaja Kallas’ greetings to all of NAFO’s Shiba Inus.

13/18
Ousting Sarah Bils as the Donbass Devushka wasn’t the only fifth column expose that NAFO research team has done - On 16 Jul 2023, we published our work on Richard Z AKA @trollstoy88, a German citizen pretending to be Russian:



14/18
Few days later, we published our research on Lazo Z AKA @200_zoka, a pro-Kremlin account that is ran by a Bosnian Serb.

Soon after this research was published, Lazo removed his account from Twitter:

15/18
On 28 Jul 2023, the Zoka story was reported by the largest online media outlet in Bosnia called Klix:



Thank you @SehaRajvosa for linking the article!

16/18klix.ba/vijesti/bih/je…
And that’s definitely not the end of it. The NAFO research team will continue their efforts to expose Russia’s fifth column in the West, and there will most certainly be more reports coming from them and me in the near future.

17/18 Image
At the same time, other #NAFOfellas keep on bonking, churning out memes, crowdfunding millions and millions to aid Ukraine, and keep being a pain in the Kremlin’s ass in general.

NAFO expansion is non-negotiable.

18/18 Image
Solid OSINT from this guy.
Image
Image
Related soups
Previous soup: Monetization Twitter/XNext soup: Rumen Radev