Author: Vojtěch Berger, HlidaciPes.org
The term “vatnik,” referring to uncritical consumers and disseminators of Kremlin propaganda, has been circulating on the internet for nearly fifteen years. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it was made even more famous by Pekka Kallioniemi, a Finnish social media expert and, as he himself says, an activist, not a journalist. On his Twitter profile (X), under the hashtag #vatniksoup, he describes the key players in Russia’s information war. In an interview for HlídacíPes.org, he admits that, with a few exceptions, Czech “vatniks” are somewhat lacking on his radar.
How do you find “your vatniks”? Is there a pattern or system, or do you simply describe what you come across?
At first, it was more random; I mainly described the Finnish scene because I knew it. And then someone suggested focusing on international “stars” as well, because there are so many of them. “Vatnik soup” is a community, a large community where people discuss and share their knowledge quite openly. I myself don’t know anything about Portuguese politics, but I have followers from Portugal who send me their tips and say: this person is interesting, we’ll help you with the translation, and so on. So the names often come from this community. But we’re missing something, and that’s the Czech “vatniks.” And we should fix that as soon as possible.
That’s what surprised me when I read your book „Vatnik Soup“, which you presented recently in Prague – there are no Czech names in it. How often do you come across Czechs when mapping Russian propaganda?
Not very often, but that’s because we definitely have a bit of a blind spot in Central Europe, for example in Poland or Slovakia. From Austria, I described former Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl (who became famous for dancing with Vladimir Putin at her own wedding and now works in Russia, ed.) and people from the Freedom Party (FPÖ). Austria is very interesting to me because of its espionage legislation and because it has been and continues to be a huge center of espionage for decades. We should focus more on this region in the future.
INFOBOX: The word „vatnik“ appeared as an internet meme that originated on the Russian social network VKontakte in 2011. One of the users published an original drawing of a so-called vatnik, a word derived from the Russian term for the padded coat worn by the character. This type of coat is often an attribute of material deprivation, which the image clearly suggests. Let’s say that the first vatnik looks like SpongeBob in pants who has gone through three years of homelessness. (Source: Vatnik Broth: A Guide to the Russian Disinformation Scene)
Since last year, a new faction called Patriots for Europe has been operating in the European Parliament, founded by the Freedom Party, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, and Andrej Babiš’s Czech ANO movement. From the outset, they have denied that this is a pro-Russian group, despite the long-standing leniency of the Freedom Party and Orbán towards the Kremlin or their rejection of anti-Russian sanctions.
That’s right, take Austria as an example again. Karin Kneissl has now moved to Russia and is working there. And that’s the back door when things go wrong here in Europe – you can always go to Russia, become the director of some institute, a researcher. Or take former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. For these people, Russia is a business opportunity, however extremely cynical, to gain power and money.
But let’s get back to the Czech “vatniks.” You did mention at least one Czech name. It was in one of your Twitter threads in 2023, and it was about a young Czech woman living in the US named Lenka White, who calls herself a correspondent at the UN in New York and is active in the conservative circles of New York Republican youth. Do you remember her?
Yes, I do.
She was part of a thread you dedicated to Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s deputy permanent representative to the UN. In the thread, you mentioned, among other things, the personal ties between Lenka White and Polyansky. In spring 2025, HlídacíPes.org reported that White, who worked as an occasional contributor to Czech Prima CNN television in the United States and repeated some of the arguments of the Trump administration and the Kremlin in her appearances, also works for the Russian state media outlets RIA Novosti and Sputnik. She was immediately fired from television after our inquiries, and Prima CNN claimed to have been unaware of her collaboration with Russian propaganda. Is this case exceptional, or do you encounter something similar often?
We simply don’t know exactly how many “Lenka Whites” there are. There are thousands of people who have infiltrated these political circles and have been doing something similar for many years. They may have an agenda, they may be working for Russian media because they couldn’t find anything else. In any case, what we see is the tip of the iceberg. Some of them are probably paid, which is not to say that this is the case here. But there will be thousands of such people in Europe, the United States, probably Canada, and certainly South America.
How come Lenka White stuck in your mind?
Because of Polyansky. He simply causes a lot of damage within the UN, using conspiracy theorists who claim that Bashar al-Assad did not carry out chemical weapons attacks on civilians in Syria. He uses the UN as a weapon. And people like Lenka White can be part of this machinery, where “experts” are used for very biased analyses.
For context, let’s add that it was Polyansky who in 2023 accused Czechia of cowardice and small-mindedness when it refused to attend a UN Security Council meeting convened by Russia over the shelling of the russian city of Belgorod. But let’s get back to the foreign collaborators of Russian propaganda. In your opinion, what is the proportion of those who are paid by Russia and those who do it out of conviction?
It’s hard to say. It depends on the specific country. In Finland, for example, I don’t think there are many paid collaborators; most are “useful idiots” who, for some reason, oppose the system, the United States, NATO, and the European Union. And for some reason, they like Putin. But in the US, money always plays a bigger role. Take the Tenet Media case, for example (a company through which Russia paid a network of American influencers to spread its worldview, ed.).
And then appearance is important—you yourself mentioned one example of a young, attractive woman. And there are others: Maria Butina (who ended up in prison in the US for attempting to infiltrate the National Rifle Association (NRA) as an agent of a foreign power with the aim of obtaining information about influential Americans and passing it on to Moscow via a Russian intermediary, ed.) or Anna Chapman (also detained in the US as an agent, now a model and presenter in Russia, ed.).
Russia knows that attractive people attract attention, so why look for real experts? It is enough to take people who claim to understand something and look good on camera, and who can also polarize and attract attention. It’s much easier than using highly trained and educated university professors. Russia does use them too, but one of its strategies is to attract attention through attractive faces.
Speaking of money, when mapping “vatniks,” did you come across payments from Russia somewhere you didn’t expect? Did you discover any new traces of Russian money?
No, because it is difficult to trace money for anyone who is not a journalist, investigator, or government official. I mostly use open sources, including cryptocurrency transactions, but even there it is relatively easy to cover your tracks.
One such Russian financial trail is the Voice of Europe case involving Russian influence on European politics through the website of the same name and a network of contacts, which was uncovered last year by the Czech counterintelligence service BIS in cooperation with other European secret services. According to media reports, Petr Bystroň, a current MEP for the German AfD party who is under investigation on suspicion of money laundering and corruption, was receiving money from Russia. The name of another AfD politician, Maximilian Krah, whom you also mention in your book, also appears in the case. Have you looked into the Voice of Europe case in more detail?
Yes, I am still looking into it. But the fact is that I try to deal with issues that have a major impact on the information space, and in my opinion, Voice of Europe did not have such an impact.
This is also the argument put forward by the persons involved in the case – that the Voice of Europe website did not have high visitor numbers and therefore could hardly influence anything in Europe. On the other hand, according to media reports, the aim was not only to build a website, but above all to establish a network of contacts in Europe that Russia could then rely on. So the money could have gone elsewhere than just to building a strong website.
Yes, but when we talk about Russian money, we must always bear in mind how large their resources for foreign influence are. We don’t know exactly, but estimates are around one and a half billion euros directed towards the West. So if you take that number and compare it to the tens of thousands of euros that were reported around Voice of Europe, it doesn’t look that staggering. But if you do hundreds and thousands of such campaigns, one is likely to catch on. So it’s more about throwing mud at the wall and waiting to see what sticks. Voice of Europe is one such project.
However, Hungary is also one of the countries investing large sums in building its own image and networking abroad. Viktor Orbán’s government cultivates and also largely pays for a network of friendly think tanks and media outlets with an international target audience, not only – but to a large extent – oriented towards the ultra-conservative wing of the American Republicans. International conferences and networking events are held, and American “researchers” visit Hungary, who then praise the country in English in podcasts, blogs, and the like. Have you mapped these connections?
Not so much in terms of money, but rather in terms of the events that take place around it. You know, many people call me a journalist, but I am an activist who supports liberal democracy—something that has been lacking in Hungary for some time now. As for the question, one naturally has to ask how a relatively poor country like Hungary can afford to pay for all this. Some of the money may come from China, with which Hungary has long-standing ties, and some may come from Russia. But the worst thing would be if some of the money came from the European Union.
Do you mean the misuse of EU funds for Orbán’s propaganda?
Yes, because Hungary also has a very high level of corruption. Just look at the opulent real estate owned by Orbán and his family. It’s a very Russian system, where proximity to the powerful matters.
Finland is often held up as a model when it comes to resilience to disinformation, media literacy, and education in general. Is any of this easily exportable to countries like the Czech Republic?
That’s a huge topic, but generally speaking, media literacy and critical thinking should be seen as a vaccine that needs to be administered early, because it takes a long time to take effect. So if you start teaching media literacy to six-year-olds, telling them stories about the consequences of lying, you’ll see the results in ten or fifteen years. And that’s not something for politicians who only see a four-year election cycle and who don’t want to finance education reform during an economic recession. But that’s the only way to start – and that’s already at preschool age, as we do in Finland.
Moreover, Russia is doing the same thing, only in reverse. It indoctrinates its children with propaganda. Children are brainwashed, taught to shoot, taught about the Great Patriotic War and the wonderful “Russian world”. So they are doing it and we in the West are not. There is an asymmetry in this, similar to the financial resources that both sides provide for it.
You have also said that in the last decade, the West has been reactive to Russian propaganda and that it is time to take the initiative again. How exactly? We hear about the need to “tell our own positive stories”, but is that enough?
Education is one thing, but I also like to talk about positive nationalism. Not the negative kind associated with the far right, neo-Nazi movements, and xenophobes. But the positive kind: why is your country good? In Finland, for example, there is the story of the legendary sniper Simo Häyhä and many others. Some of these stories gain international recognition, and Czechia certainly has many of them too. This is positive nationalism.
You have been publishing “Vatnik soup” on the X network (formerly Twitter) since 2022. Has this had any negative consequences for you personally? There is a well-known case of Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro, who faced stalking and threats for exposing Russian troll farms…
There have been a few pre-trial summonses, death threats too, of course, but that’s part of the game. It’s also a sign that my work is having an impact. The difference between me and Jessikka is that she started at a time when the Russians were still very active in Finland, so they could target her. And then, of course, there’s the gender issue, because women face much more verbal aggression. But yes, I’ve had my fair share of sh*t too.
