In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss the sad (but funny) state of Finnish vatniks. After Russia launched their full-scale invasion against Ukraine, the Finnish pro-Kremlin/conspiracy theorist scene experienced a dramatic devaluation and hasn’t been able to bounce back since.
1/20

I often get asked about the current state of the Finnish vatnik club, and there’s usually not much to report.

It’s not because these people have stopped, but because today their work has only comedic value.

So here’s the latest:

2/20

Master vatnik and traitor Johan Bäckman has relocated to Russia, and he was recently given a Russian citizenship. It’s obvious that Johan was recruited by Russia’s intelligence agencies a long time ago. He’s still producing videos on YouTube on his…

3/20

…Z-Studio channel, where he spreads Kremlin’s disinformation and propaganda. Most of this is revisionist bullshit glorifying the Soviet days.

One of the videos shows a “re-enactment” of Finnish soldiers surrendering and shot dead by the Soviet forces.

4/20

A few days ago, he also attended an event in Russia in which Russia’s intelligence agency SVR launched a massive disinformation campaign against Finland. The event was hosted by the Kremlin spy master Sergey Naryshkin…

5/20

…but Johan also had a role in this charade - he held a presentation that showed Finnish politicians like the former prime minister Sanna Marin criticizing Russia. Most of these clips were heavily edited and/or taken out of context.

6/20

Janus Putkonen is allegedly still in Donbas, and his propaganda outlet UMV-Lehti (renamed from MV-Lehti) is still pushing out digital diarrhea to all of its 8 readers. Occasionally, his “expertise” is presented by RT.

More on Putkonen here:



7/20

Bäckman and Putkonen are (literally) the “big dogs”, but there are a few, even more pathetic vatniks who still remain in Finland. One of them is Panu Huuhtanen, who bravely protested the video restrictions at a literary festival in Helsinki. After he was kindly asked to…

8/20

…stop filming @JessikkaAro's presentation and refused, he was removed from the premises. Huuhtanen was so badly injured, that he had to improvise a makeshift tourniquet to support his terribly wounded leg.

9/20

Huuhtanen is part of Toimittajaliitto (Journalist Association), a scam journalist association founded by Johan Bäckman in 2016. Its current chairman is Juha Korhonen, another sad Finnish vatnik veteran, whose projects ALWAYS fail miserably.

10/20

Korhonen is best-known for courageously burning the NATO flag and commenting Finland’s NATO membership for RT, but apparently he’s also responsible for creating the “press passes” for Toimittajaliitto. Being the creative guy he is…

11/20

…he used the Finnish postal services tracking codes as the barcodes for these passes - to be fair, they probably don’t even understand what barcodes are used for. The background image of the pass, depicting a Canadian school, was stolen from stock photo services.

12/20

And this is not the first time this ragtag of losers have stalked Aro: Bäckman was even given a suspended sentence for stalking her, and Huuhtanen and Korhonen have also followed and recorded Aro’s movements and whereabouts. What a sad bunch of people.

13/20

Finally, a short story on how Russian information operations work in Finland and how Russia produces propaganda against foreign states:

Finnish old-school politician Kimmo Kiljunen recently attended an event organized by Russian organization…

14/20

…Aleksanterinliitto (Александровское Общество). The group members interviewed Mr. Kiljunen, whose wife is Russian, and who until today acted as the Finnish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs chair. During the interview, he said that the Finnish-Russian border…

15/20

…should be re-opened and that Finnish tabloids are conducting “hybrid influencing” and are “servants of Russian trolls”. He also criticized the ban on Russian land deals in Finland. After the interview was publicized by Finnish freelance journalist @OutiSalovaara…

16/20

…Kiljunen was harshly criticized by other MPs and his own party, and he later had to resign from his position.

The Kremlin often uses groups like Aleksanterinliitto (that was created to protest the border closure) as vessels for their propaganda.

17/20

It took Russian media only a few hours to start pushing out their one-sided narrative out of the incident, and Aleksanterinliitto recently announced that they will organize four demonstrations in Finland to shed more attention on the border issue.

18/20

Of course Juha Korhonen also had to get involved in this mess - he interviewed the chairman of Aleksanterinliitto, Rostislav Vladimirskiy, who finally got the chance to spread Kremlin BS to a massive audience of around 20 people.

19/20

Aleksanterinliitto claims that they are independent and not in any way related to the Kremlin. Yet, this particular group has been previously in contact with the Russian MFA about the border, and they’ve been unable to condemn Russia’s full-scale invasion against Ukraine.

20/20

Kiitos, @vitjavaari!

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