In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll talk about why we’re doing this: why we think Ukraine is so important and why we believe that souping vatniks and debunking their propaganda narratives is so crucial to counter Russia’s & their allies’ wars of aggression and achieve real peace.

War is expensive, and Russia is not a rich country that could afford this: Hospitals? Roads? Plumbing? No: everything into terror and destruction.

But not only that. There is a 2nd item in the Russian state budget that remains strong no matter what:

Russia is now spending around $5 billion/year on information operations, troll and bot farms, paid influencers, aimed at sowing instability globally and diminishing support for Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/JD9Mduk5lS

— SPRAVDI — Stratcom Centre (@StratcomCentre) January 31, 2026

Manufacturing support for that terror and destruction. Propaganda. Vatniks. “Innocent” travel bloggers. “Independent” journalists. “Patriotic” politicians. Russia spends hundreds of billions of rubles a year ($5 billion) on this, and that kind of money buys you A LOT of BS.

Russia itself is destroyed by this as well in the long run. Criminals are released after their “glorious” stint as war criminals, to commit more crimes. Children are indoctrinated for the next wars, the whole society is militarized while infrastructure goes derelict.

War is VERY expensive. Missiles, bombs, shells, drones, even troops are expensive, no matter how expendable.

And if the defense is good, if the missiles get intercepted, the troops pushed back, the drones shot down, then it’s all for nothing: might as well not invade.

And in fact Russia would not have invaded if they didn’t expect to succeed. Planning their war since 2003, they were not ready for a full-scale invasion in 2014. They waited for the right moment, when they thought they could win. But they underestimated Ukrainian heroism…

…and overestimated the success of their own propaganda: not good enough to win, but good enough to let them get away with destroying a lot of cities and getting a lot of people killed.

War is expensive, but propaganda is cheap: spending a few extra bucks on top of that…

… two-million-dollar Kinzhal missile, to convince the world to let that Kinzhal missile murder the civilians that they’ve decided to murder, sadly makes all the difference. And yes, it’s cheap AND Russia throws insane amounts of money at this, multiplying the damage.

But sometimes they splurge, too. Tim Pool and Benny Johnson for example were getting $100,000 a week. Did the Kremlin decide that Tiny Tim banging his little fist on the table against Ukraine was actually worth all that money? Maybe, or maybe they think in the long run:

Sowing chaos to destabilize the West. Inciting civil war. Encouraging secession movements. Wagner rampaging through Africa, causing wars and migration crises, then fuelling populist reactions to it, with Russia playing both sides of social tensions:

Migration Bomb

And other bought influencers, journalists and politicians are regularly exposed around the world (and how many more that we can guess). The goal is always the same: discourage help to Ukraine by sowing doubt and confusion, so that Russia can bomb and murder with impunity.

The war is horrible in itself, and what Russia does to Ukrainians, whether to the captured soldiers, through the terrorist bombings, or to civilians under occupation, is unspeakable, and must absolutely be stopped regardless of any other concerns.

Tortures and sexual abuses

But for those who don’t think that’s reason enough, there’s other concerns too. Passively letting this happen emboldens Russia in Georgia, in “hybrid” operations against the rest of Europe, possibly the Baltics next. Orbán and Trump admire Putin’s authoritarian impunity.

And China is watching: bankrolling Russia while observing how the war goes, to decide whether they, too, could get away with invading their sovereign neighbor — another potential war where millions could die or end up under occupation, probably leading to a wider conflict.

All of this is made possible by the passivity of global public opinion, by the lack of serious sanctions against Russia, by the fact that politicians in positions of power are not laughed out of the room every time they spread vatnik lies about Ukraine or praise Putin.

The Kremlin is not even trying to convince you that they’re the good guys. Their goal is to demoralize you: make you lose confidence in truth, morality, Western values, any values. To make you doubt everything, to “bothside” the clearest war ever.

Firehose of Falsehood

A few extra gullible “useful idiots” will openly join Russia (it never ends well for them). But many more will simply proclaim their indifference to a simple conflict made confusing by propaganda, and hence refuse to act — enough to make the war much easier for Putin.

Our aim is to counter that propaganda. To fight Russia’s impunity in the long run by countering and debunking the lies their entire operation depends on: the active or passive support manufactured by the spread and acceptance of vatnik narratives.

To make this war end sooner. To avoid further ones.

For that, we make soup: threads, articles, videos, podcasts, books, all compiled & searchable for free on our website. The larger the impact we have, the more of a real difference we can make.

Vatnik Soup

There are many ways to help Ukraine. But with a war unfortunately going on since 2014, full-scale since 2022, besides the urgent military and humanitarian needs, the underlying propaganda needs to be addressed too.

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