Yes; in fact, on this specific population. The collapse of the Soviet Union was, in part, helped by increased access to information about conditions outside of it, and to external goods and services.
Which may happen anyway from Putin's side if he declares martial law, which is rumored might happen tomorrow.
In fact if there was a holocaust in Ukraine right now being perpetrated by the west wouldn't they just deny it?
The point of Russian propaganda is to create noise it doesn't have to be right it just has to make noise.
Holocaust: It happened mostly away from the cities, so that's likely how it would be happenig now, too. So if Russians wanted to reveal that that is happening, all that would need to happen was for them to send some scouts/spies/infiltrators to the locations where the mass extermination is happening and make a bunch of videos and publish them. There would be no need to shell and try to siege cities, shoot into civilians, etc.
Instead of this, all we get is a ton of imagery of destroyed Ukranian cities, and killings of civilians.
We can't maybe disprove the negative, but we don't need to. Russia needs to prove the positive.
Russia faked satellite pictures of a Ukraine fighter jet shooting down MH17. They are obvious fakes too the plane is missing Malaysia markings but any western news source that proves they are fake is considered western propaganda / fake news, any Russian critics are labeled as western spies and are arrested.
Putin is in power he doesn't need the consent of his citizens or the rest of the world he doesn't need facts or truth and can easily poison that well until no one can drink from it which is exactly what we are seeing with Putins holocaust claims.
It's not a solution in the real world
The Russian government actively promotes hacking against the west and refuses to prosecute anyone for it.
Does that even matter? The access to the general internet isn't something you have to "earn". You're not more entitled to be in this space more than the next person regardless of your contribution, beliefs or identity.
> The Russian government actively promotes hacking against the west and refuses to prosecute anyone for it.
Our government friends at the NSA are equally guilty of that as well, I'm not seeing much outrage over that either.
Indeed, all those NSA ransomware attacks on hospitals have to stop!
Perhaps they’re not actually equally guilty and the NSA is far more careful with their approach than the Russians?
The NotPetya wiper worm was released by the Russian government, the NSA has never been accused of anything similar.
This kind of false equivalency is nothing but dishonest, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Of course it has. The NSA was accused of created Stuxnet, the worm that targeted Iran industrial control systems (such as nuclear power plants). Wikipedia[0] says:
> On 1 June 2012, an article in The New York Times said that Stuxnet is part of a US and Israeli intelligence operation named Operation Olympic Games, devised by the NSA under President George W. Bush and executed under President Barack Obama.
and:
> A Wired magazine article about US General Keith B. Alexander stated: "And he and his cyber warriors have already launched their first attack. The cyber weapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid-2000s."
Petya was an international crisis.
Indeed. When the US released Stuxnet it was specifically made to be discreet and dormant unless activated on a specific target.
Russia just throws a pipe bomb into the room and hopes the door is thick enough to withstand the blast.
> Our government friends at the NSA are equally guilty of that as well, I'm not seeing much outrage over that either.
Not the same. In Russia the only cybercrime that goes to court is Russian on Russian crime. Crime against the west isn't a crime. Russians are allowed to write malware and defraud targets... just so long as those targets are not Russian.
If I ripped off 10,000 Russian grandmothers as an American; the FBI would find me and prosecute me.
> You're not more entitled to be in this space more than the next person regardless of your contribution, beliefs or identity.
You probably typed your message on an Intel, AMD, or ARM CPU running on 95% American code. Russians are entitled to what the west decides to give them unless they want to do a better job themselves.
Please get off your high horse, that's just disgusting. Yikes.
Nonsense, that's not how it works.
> Russians are allowed to write malware and defraud targets... just so long as those targets are not Russian.
Nope. Article 273 of the Criminal Code.
> If I ripped off 10,000 Russian grandmothers as an American; the FBI would find me and prosecute me.
Unlikely.
It seems like you are not entirely aware that we don't actually have functioning global anti-crybercrime mechanisms. If you think FBI would care what you do with Russian part of the internet, you are deluded. Try hosting something in Russia, you will quickly change your assumptions of the threat model.
Really, it's surprising to see people on Hackernews who don't understand how infosec is a thing and why cybercrime actually works, when technology-wise everything should be more or less traceable.
You can make similar assumptions about a lot of different ethnic groups.