For years, Stas Vasilyev was the guy you watched if you wanted to know which smartphone had a better camera or why a certain laptop was overpriced. He was loud, sometimes rude, but generally seen as a tech blogger with a temper. That all changed drastically. When the full-scale war started, the gadgets disappeared, and the political ranting took over completely. He didn't just share an opinion; he became a weapon in the information war.
The screenshot above perfectly captures his current reality. He gets banned from YouTube—the biggest video platform in the world—and his reaction is to scream insults about Americans and brag about being an "internet legend." But what exactly was he doing to get to this point?
First, he went to the occupied territories. While bombs were falling on Ukrainian cities, Stas decided to play the role of a war correspondent. He traveled to Donbas, specifically to the ruins of Mariupol, to film what he called a "documentary." Instead of showing the horror of destruction caused by the invasion, he twisted the narrative to blame the victims. This wasn't journalism; it was pure Stas Vasilyev propaganda dressed up with high production value. He walked through destroyed neighborhoods, trying to convince his young audience that black was white.
Then came the "jokes." Stas has always had a dark sense of humor, but it turned sadistic. He made comments mocking the deaths of people and laughed off war crimes. This behavior alienated a huge chunk of his old audience, but he didn't care because he was gaining a new one: the angry, pro-war crowd in Russia. He fed them exactly what they wanted to hear—that the whole world is wrong and only they are right.
The biggest turning point was his official employment. He stopped pretending to be just an independent blogger "asking questions" and joined Solovyov Live. Vladimir Solovyov is the face of Russian state TV propaganda, the man who threatens to nuke Europe every other Tuesday. By joining his team, Stas admitted he is part of the system. He sits in a studio, paid by the state, repeating narratives that justify the invasion.
Now, he is fighting a losing battle with platforms. YouTube keeps deleting his channels because hate speech and calling for violence violate their rules. Every time he is banned, like in the image, he cries about censorship and tells his followers to move to Russian platforms like VK or RuTube. But let's be honest, the reach there is tiny compared to YouTube. He acts like he doesn't care, shouting "PENDOSY SASAT" (a slur telling Americans to suck it), but the panic is visible. He went from reviewing iPhones to being a mouthpiece for a war, and now he's slowly being boxed into a corner of the internet where only the most radicalized people can hear him.
