OPINION: ‘Vatnik Soup’ - An Encyclopedia of Kremlin Agents and Dupes

The Kremlin has launched a vast global operation to subvert the political systems of Western democracies as detailed in a new book: Vatnik Soup: The Ultimate Guide to Russian Disinformation (KLE-art, 594 pages).  The Scandinavian authors Pekka Kallioniemi, a Finn, and Morten Hammeken, a Dane, attempt to provide an antidote.

Vatnik Soup is divided into three sections.

In the first, the authors discuss the basic information warfare methodologies used by Putin’s Russia to influence Western political systems, which differ substantially from those used by USSR. While the soviets did employ all four of the classic methods - MICE (money, ideology, compromat, and ego to create fifth columns within free nations, their most effective tool was the seductive lie of the communist dream.

In contrast, Putin’s Kremlin offers no such utopia to recruit armies of well-meaning dupes. Instead, it primarily makes use of cold hard cash to enlist the help of agents of influence well-positioned within government, business or the media in the West.

While Soviet propaganda generally tried to convince Western audiences of versions favorable to its interests, Putin’s system does not limit itself to trying to win debates over current events. It also attempts to destroy the debate process itself by vigorously circulating numerous contradictory lines. The point of this is to so confuse the public to the point where they believe that “nothing is true and everything is possible,” thereby undermining any potential resistance to Kremlin manipulation.

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In the second part of the book the authors lay out and refute several key falsehoods that are incessantly circulated by Kremlin agents and duly parroted by their dupes.

These include the lies that Russia had been or is willing to conduct peace negations with Ukraine; that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was forced by NATO expansion;  that the 2014 popular uprising known as the Revolution of Dignity that broke Ukraine out of Kremlin control was a CIA orchestrated coup; that Ukraine is ruled by neo-Nazis; that Ukraine had been conducting genocide against “ethnic Russians” in the Donbas; that the West is decadent and requires the moral leadership of Putin’s Russia for its restoration to traditional values, and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a corrupt oligarch who is diverting Western miliary aid to buy himself yachts and palaces around the world.

But the heart of the book is its third section, by far its longest, where the authors present short biographies of no less than ninety-three key “vatniks,” or Kremlin agents of influence. About a third of the vatniks are American, a third European, a quarter Russian, and the remainder scattered among Canada, Australia, and a few other miscellaneous countries.

The biographies are written in a very colloquial style, and many are quite generous to their subjects. For example, the authors attribute the incessant pro-Kremlin utterances of venture investor David Sacks to his lack of accurate knowledge about Ukraine.

In other cases, very interesting associations between vatniks are identified. The leader of the US Communist Party Jackson Hinkle, a longtime friend and associate of Director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard, has been promoted by Tucker Carlson, Russia-1 TV’s Vladimir Solovyev, and the Assad regime.

Particularly instructive are biographies of prestigious individuals whose credentials allow them access to the corridors of power and elite publications. Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, for example, might appear to many to be a person whose pronouncements should be given great weight in policy circles. However, from reading his biography in Vatnik Soup, the picture that emerges is quite different.

Sachs, while assigned to directing US aid to Russia during the Clinton administration not only helped engineer the rise of the post-soviet kleptocracy, but he has also apparently maintained his loyalty to it ever since.

Sach’s points of apparent Kremlin affinity include calling for dismantling “US hegemony’” parroting the Kremlin’s call for a “a multi-polar world;” claiming that the CIA goaded the Kremlin into attacking Afghanistan in 1979 and aiding Assad in 2015; that the US planned the Revolution of Dignity that overthrew Viktor Yanukovych in 2014; that eastern European nations such as Finland should be denied the right to join NATO; that the COVID-19 epidemic was the result of a leak from a US biolab; and that the US should deny miliary aid to Ukraine. Their analysis goes on:

“True to form, Sachs also blames the US for bombing the Nord Stream pipelines and even addressed the UN Security Council on Russia’s behalf on the matter.

“While eagerly defending Russian interests, Sachs also appears to be a big fan of China and has defended the country’s genocide of the Uyghur population by saying that the term “genocide” simply doesn’t apply there. When confronted with this in an interview, he evaded the question and referred to the “huge human rights abuses committed by the US.”

Vatnik Soup’s authors don’t state their own politics but reading between the lines they appear to be typically center-left Scandinavian social democrats. However, this does not stop them from harshly attacking the many European social democrats who have sold out to Putin. It does somewhat distort their political analysis, as they tend to see the drift into the Kremlin camp of “right wing” figures like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone as simply a matter of bad people become worse, while former “leftists” like RFK Jr or Tulsi Gabbard were supposedly once on the side of the angels until they went too far around the political horseshoe and became rightists themselves.

This flawed analysis is based on the notion that the concepts of “Left” and “Right,” despite being drawn from the seating arrangements in the French National Assembly of 1789, still define political identify today. It’s pretty clear from reading their book that a more useful political spectrum for understanding the crisis they discuss would more accurately be not Left versus Right, but West versus East.

But that is a nit-pick. What is important about Vatnik Soup is not its authors’ politics, but the vast number of critical facts they have assembled in one useful guide.

The West is under attack. There is a kinetic aspect to the assault, but the enemy’s most deadly weapon, by far, are its massive disinformation campaigns. All of the West’s military and economic muscle will be of no use if the enemy succeeds in confusing us, blinding us, or sets us fighting among ourselves.

To defeat an enemy, you must know the enemy. Read Vatnik Soup.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.

Dr. Robert Zubrin @robert_zubrin is an aerospace engineer and author of 12 books, including most recently The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet