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> And if you take a look at videos from Feb, people in the Eastern part of Ukraine don't mind the Russian army there, even wave and show high-fives. My highly incorrect calculations suggest that about 80% of people in Eastern Ukraine support Russia. In the middle part, that figure is maybe 30-40%, and in Western Ukraine near zero.

This could explain the normalization of the openly Nazi Azov Battalion. Another commenter here last week pointed out that 30-50% of the regular Ukranian army may sympathize with Russia so the ultra nationalist Azov Battalion became an official military unit since they are die-hard Ukranian loyalists.

> Obviously, high-level propaganda flows from Russia and the West both. I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle.

If you believe “the truth is somewhere in the middle”, then Putins propaganda machine is working very well on you even though you don’t actually believe it.

> 30 Pentagon-funded biowarfare labs in Ukraine.

That just does not make any sense to me. Why should those labs be somewhere in Ukraine rather than in US?

Well, I think it actually does make sense. Don't keep highly-virulent samples on your soil. But, obviously, any propaganda is propaganda. We can't prove or disprove it without any facts.

I am also highly unsure about the bit in the Western news outlets that Russians were tried to damage Zap Nuclear Plant two days ago. Our news outlets state that plant has been under control from Feb 28th (probably true). This incident was a try to destroy a training building (not in the restricted area) that contained some documentation or just to spook West. In my opinion, it's a complete bs. If you can control the largest nuclear power plant, you can control energy for half of Ukraine. Why damage it?

Having said that, I see a lot of bs from both sides. So, no fact is a fact unless proven.

> Well, I think it actually does make sense. Don't keep highly-virulent samples on your soil.

I don't think it makes sense. Why do something secret where you have less control or ability to monitor the surrounding area and the people? It's easier to for a surprise to occur, or for a development/leak not to be noticed.

There was an active CCTV feed of the entire event. About 60,000 people were watching it at the peak. I personally saw RPGs fired, and hundreds of tracer bullets lighting up what apparently was an admin building like a Christmas tree at one point, and I wasn't paying very close attention to it because I was cooking dinner at the same time.

Granted, the reactors were a bit further away (and I think in a different direction) than the admin buildings. I do think the camera rotated to show one of the reactors on fire at one point, but from what I read it was a currently inactive one (although it had fuel in it) and firefighters were eventually allowed to put out the fires.

I don't think the goal was to blow up a reactor, it looked like the goal was to take over the plant to control a good chunk of the power in Ukraine, which makes strategic sense in a war, it's what I do in real-time-strategy games, is try to kill the power as soon as possible. But I'm also playing a video game and if the whole place blows up or melts down it's just pixels on a screen.

The amount of firepower I saw that close to nuclear reactors looked super dangerous and reckless and I think Russia got lucky that something worse didn't happen there.

Here's the part of the feed I'm referring to where they lit up a building, but all four hours of it are there (some of it nothing much was happening): https://youtu.be/fYUT36YGOh8?t=11467

An active CCTV feed does not a verifiable source in and of itself make.

>Why should those labs be somewhere in Ukraine rather than in US?

Same reason we offshore gain of function virus research to Wuhan China.

That being said, this is the first I've heard of this claim so I have zero idea how true it is.

I have a zero idea, too. This is currently circulated by Russian local/nationwide outlets.