In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Swiss social media personality, investment banker and journalist, Vadim Loskutov (@runews). He’s best-known for praising Russia and its politics, and criticizing the West while living comfortably in Switzerland.

1/16

This research was conducted in collaboration with the Swiss NAFO fellas and The Unintelligence Agency.

Loskutov allegedly originally hails from the Republic of Kalmykia, located in the North Caucasus region of Southern Russia.

2/16

According to some Wikibin entries, Vadim was allegedly building a career as a media personality in Russia. Based on the text, he worked as a presenter and video jockey on various Russian music shows during the 90s, and he allegedly also voiced radio advertisements.

3/16

The whole biography seems extremely sketchy, as he would’ve been just 13-years old when he was working as a music presenter on Russian national TV, and 18-years old when was a video jockey, producer and a host on Russian MTV.

4/16

There is hardly any proof of this, and the whole career history could be completely made up to hide his intelligence background or to help him getting employed in Switzerland. Whatever the truth is, we couldn’t locate any evidence that a man named Vadim Loskutov ever...

5/16

...worked in the Russian music business. But we do know that Vadim had a show called RussenRadio! in Swiss alternative radio channel called LoRa. The show featured Russian music, news and comedy sketches for German and English speaking audiences.

6/16

According to Loskutov, he is a “seasoned journalist” with over 20 years of experience on “reporting on Investments, Cryptos, and Geopolitics”. He also allegedly worked as a senior trader at Glencore, one of worlds biggest commodity trading and mining companies.

7/16

His public commercial records reveal that between 2012-2020 he was approved to make signatures (and from 2015 acted as the VC of their Zürich branch) for CBH, a Swiss private bank. The company has been involved in many alleged controversies, including money laundering.

8/16

Loskutov is also a big fanboy of Elon, and he’s also a strong proponent of his “free speech absolutism” on X. It would be interesting to hear what Vadim has to say about specific search terms in relation to the conflict in Middle East that are now censored on this platform.

9/16

When it comes to Ukraine, Vadim’s propaganda focuses on the Kremlin’s main narratives: money laundering in Ukraine, Ukraine must negotiate truce, the US is falling apart whereas Russia is thriving.. & all this from the comfort of his allegedly nice apartment in Switzerland.
10/16

He seems to be a strong opponent of the “woke culture”, often using the common phrase “go woke, go broke” whenever any big brand tries a marketing strategy involving “woke” elements like trans people or men wearing pink clothes. He also seems to hate the “woke” Swiss media.
11/16

Once the story about Donbass Devuska came out, he created a theory that WSJ was taking revenge on Russia after one of WSJ’s journalists, Evan Gershkovich was arrested. He’s also called WaPo a “NATO propaganda machine”.

Vadim’s favorite Swiss media seems to be Weltwoche.

12/16

In April 2023, the @runews account informed that he starts writing for pro-Kremlin outlet called Die Weltwöche. This connects the @runews account to Vadim Loskutov.

Weltwoche, founded in 1933, was bought by the Swiss grand-vatnik Roger Köppel in 2006:



13/16

https://x.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1655872679373578241

Ironically, he’s complained about the lack of press freedom in Europe, while in his home country anyone who criticizes the Kremlin gets either murdered or imprisoned.He also supports German politician Sahra Wagenknecht’s populist, pro-Kremlin policies:
14/16

https://x.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1717557852078756199

Vadim also seems to be a raging antisemite. He called the 30 October 2023 pogrom of mob storming the Makhachkala airport in search of Jewish passengers from Israel a “protest”. The term ’pogrom’ refers to violent attacks by local non-Jewish populations on Jews in Russia.

15/16

In February 2023, Vadim tweeted that he was allegedly “charged” by the Swiss police & he called for @RusEmbSwiss to help him. It’s a perfect example of how the 5th column lives in the West: they enjoy its luxuries, but whenever they run into trouble, they call for Russia to help.
16/16