Conversely they've been pretty effective at stopping information about their own disposition of forces being posted to social media, or at least it's not being retweeted anywhere I've seen.
That's like saying there's no evidence the NSA has saved this exact message in Xkeyscore.
This illustrates the danger of conspiracy theory thinking: you’ve got yourself arguing a more complicated explanation with absolutely no evidence, and if we’re going by institutional reputations as portrayed by Hollywood wouldn’t the same logic have lead you to expect a massive Russian counter-campaign?
But if you believe they don't get help from western intelligence agencies, you're looking the other way.
In another forum, someone said to watch for the coming "let's roll" vignettes. Of course they were right, the US corporate press seems to be looking for narratives of heroic Ukrainian resistance, whatever the evidence - the defiant Snake Island defenders (who there later emerged video of them surrendering and Ukrainian officials saying they may still be alive), the Ghost of Kyiv fighter ace (who does seem like an actual ghost) and on and on. Of course it's difficult to verify the facts of these heroic narratives spun from rumor and propaganda during the fog of war, where the first casualty is the truth.
There are also many reports from almost the first day about how the Russian military is on its last legs and so forth, which sounds absurd. There may be one or two small there's there, but from US corporate media reports you'd think they were on the verge of defeat. Kind of like how the NLF were said to be on their last legs in 1968, prior to the Tet Offensive.
Yes, who was? (Hint: not the CIA)
You’re talking about Victoria Nuland, who was assistant Secretary of State at the time. She visited the protests at the time her boss was decrying the treatment of protesters and openly voiced support for democracy as opposed to how Yanukovich’s government was treating them. She helped distribute food – the cookies claim is a tell that you spend a lot of time consuming Russian propaganda since they’ve tried to spin this as America wanting compliant Ukrainian lapdogs - but that’s hardly a secret: all of this was in public in her official capacity, hardly some shadowy CIA plot.
It's not a claim, there's video of her doing it. So "Russian propaganda" means a video of a US assistant of secretary of state handing out cookies in the Maidan Square where the Azov battalion etc. were overthrowing the elected Ukrainian government.
This is what I was referring to earlier: she gave out food, as was reported at the time, but the Russian sources you appear to be repeating LOVE to describe it as cookies for some reason and have continued doing so for years. Nobody else does that because it's an absurd thing to be upset about in any case: a U.S. State department official tours a rally in support of pro-democracy demonstrators is hardly unexpected and if it was something shameful as implied they wouldn't have done it in front of a ton of reporters. (… and, if you recall we were talking about a CIA conspiracy theory when they rarely do things literally in the public square using real names)
Similarly, it's pretty telling that you try to link this to the Azov battalion rather than the groups which actually lead the protests and you continue to characterize it using the terms which the Russian state media favor rather than how most independent observers do.
Ukraine's PR is much better than CIA/MI6’s own PR.
OTOH, I bet they and other Western intelligence service are feeding Ukraine Intel that is instrumental in both the material (compared to expectations) and PR success that Ukraine is having.
Supply chains are being disrupted due to civilian resistance and lack of air dominance. It's not only social media, it's a total war situation, unanticipated by invader.
Let's see how "endless" it will look in a week or two.
I mean they are already bombing civilian areas so thousands are dying, just not being reported to keep moral up.
Putin will threaten maybe nukes in response but there has to be a no-fly zone over Ukraine or they are going to be destroyed by end of March.
Putin doesn't have to occupy Ukraine, he just has to destroy it, that's way easier. It will take at least a decade to rebuild if not multiple.
All dead Ukrainians are accounted and reported immediately, as time allows. We are doing that for last 8 years, day by day. We are outnumbered by Russians, so nobody interested in how many Russians died today, but every single dead Ukrainian soldier or civilian is a tragedy for us.
Furthermore, we don't need to keep the moral up. I was second officer at my recruit center at day 1 of war. I was promised that I will be sent to front line on next day, but on next day some soldiers are returned back, because all military units are full to top.
We need more weapons, armor, planes. We have plenty of man, who want to kill Russians, because after 8 years of war we all lost somebody we know.
This. The war is treated as some kind of theatrical performance, with gags, magical heroes killing Russians by the thousands a day and God knows what else. It's crazy.
I thought so too, until I heard their economy is as big as the Benelux. Then I though, how can they be a "world power"?
I looked at military spending:
US: 778 bn China: 252 bn India: 72.9 bn Russia: 61.7 UK: 59.2
So in other words, they spend about the same as UK, and 12x less than US alone.
They are still riding the old Soviet days. We believe their military is a world power, they (probably) believe their military is a world power. Until you look at the actual numbers. Their tanks are Soviet, their planes and helis are Soviet, their walkie-talkies are customer products. Their entire nuclear arsenal is inherited from the Soviets. It's all old, and they don't have the budget for a modern big army.
That might als explain why they are struggling so much in Ukraine.
Entertainingly, in 2019 a general went to jail because the supposed "made in Russia" radios were Chinese cheap consumer Baofeng radios which had had the labels swapped.
https://warsawinstitute.org/deputy-chief-russias-general-sta...
Short of a friendly and broadly supported coup or a complete ideological u-turn from Putin, there is no way forward here that doesn't risk everything. Trying to ignore it seems the least helpful.
This is fear mongering, why the hell do you want a nuclear war so bad. I hope NATO officials keep sanity and do not start a war with russia.
> there is no way forward here that doesn't risk everything.
Yes there is, NATO can provide arms to ukrainian people and they need to fight for their freedom.
Sitting on the sidelines and expecting the tiny countries that surround Russia to individually win wars, or expecting the beaten and suppressed peoples of Russia, Belarus, etc to rise up is inhumane… because they will fight. And die.
And say we do sit it out. Do you think the restoration of the USSR is what's going to bring us nuclear peace? Or just another border, more tension, more of this?
We've played this game before. As a European, my life would be extraordinarily different if the world hadn't eventually come together 81 years ago. Just imagine if Europe and the US had drawn together two years earlier.
I don't want nuclear war but holding up the threat of that as a cause for inaction —heaping guns on Ukraine while they're outnumbered 20:1 doesn't count— is the rank cowardice that nuclear dictators count on to get away with murder. It's not good enough.
And again, allowing Putin to subsume a new democracy doesn't make the world safer. It shows him he can dictate over his neighbours while the West does nothing.
I'm a bit twisted about this. In school, as a German, we were told that the Nazis only reported their wins, not their losses, and how this was such a terrible thing to do (I'm not saying Ukrainians are like Nazis of course.)
But there are a lot of ways to shape a narrative in 2022 that involve amplification instead of censorship.
https://www.rewire.org/vietnam-war-media-shapes-public-opini...
Of course, official propaganda of any county at war would highlight wins and dim the losses, if anything but for morale purposes.
Literally every belligerent in WW2 did that?
In this case, OP likely refers to false impression that the conquest was going well while it was already lost.
That is exactly what I was referring to. I should've been more clear.
When dozens, if not hundreds, of soldiers and civilians die every hour, it's hard to track all of them. Usually, most information about losses will be available after the end of an intensive firefight, when officers will have time to fill reports. Some information about shootings is reported by civilians, but it is hard to verify it.
[0]: https://www.facebook.com/MinistryofDefence.UA/posts/26756335...
[1]: https://www.facebook.com/MinistryofDefence.UA/posts/26756335...
[2]: https://www.facebook.com/MinistryofDefence.UA/posts/26701995...
> remnants
This unfortunately appears to be true; there's a number of people there, especially international students, who've been trying to flee and report getting blocked at the borders.
Ukraine is not a flawless guilt-free country, nowhere is, but that should not be used to distract people from the reality of the invasion.