The irony of course being that the American political demographic, MAGA, with the biggest grievances regarding tech “censorship” also appear to be most willing to make excuses for or deny Russian war crimes.
What’s real? How do we know our perception of reality isn’t being distorted by algorithms and sampling bias?
They should be. But “overwhelming evidence” should be rephrased as “lots of allegations.”
Is Ukraine committing war crimes? I am not pro-Russia by any stretch, but the actions taken by both sides in that war aren’t so black and white.
Watching this war as a dispassionate observer, it’s a study in propaganda. Zelensky broadcasting using a green screen to make it look like he’s on the streets for instance. The famous “I don’t need a ride, I need ammo” quote. The so called Ghost pilot who supposedly shot down a bunch of Russian fighters (which didn’t happen by the way.)
There is also the stories of torture — stories being given to the media by the Ukraine government. At least some of which are unverifiable: https://www.reuters.com/world/pentagon-cant-independently-co...
Other media outlets have run stories of torture based on materials given to them by a government that has a vested interest in anti-Russian sentiment.
And still other confusion on the air strike on the materai it y hospital: https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/03/testimony-mariupol-hospit...
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/02/11/ukraine-attacks-military...
So we aren’t making excuses for Russia (why would I, an American in Texas, give any fucks about Russia?) — but we are used to the media lying and lying over the past several years.
Case in point: Hunter Biden’s laptop. Whether or not it matters, the point is that a bunch of media and intelligence types told us it was “Russian disinformation.” Yet two years later WaPo and The NY Times have confirmed the authenticity of the laptop contents. Two years after they made a big point of suppressing or discrediting it.
So we’re supposed to believe those same media outlets when they are getting hand-fed by one of the participants in the Ukraine War?
A lot of people have lost the ability to think critically. Read the North Korean News Agency sometime. The language isn’t much different than how the western media frames the Ukraine War. One sided, with a strong propaganda diction.
Was the Russian invasion wrong? Possibly. But what’s the other side of the story? What’s the background? What exactly was the situation in the Russian-speaking regions of the Ukraine? Are there actual neo-Nazis in Ukraine? What’s the real story of the Azov battalion?
War is messy. Propaganda can never be trusted. And calling the other side a war criminal serves a valuable purpose. To be clear, I am not saying war crimes haven’t happened. I am saying that such claims ought to be dispassionately evaluated. Using schools to base troops and them complaining when Russia bombs a school — that seems a bit ridiculous. That’s the same tactic Hamas uses. And it works. It generates sufficient international outrage because apparently a large portion of the world lacks the ability to think critically
So no, not making excuses for Russia — but also not blindly cheerleading Ukraine. I don’t know enough about the background of that conflict to have much of an opinion. My opinion is more in line with media criticism rather than any version of the facts.
May as well just go ahead and believe North Korean propaganda at this rate. Maybe the world is covering up the truth. We haven't been there so we really can't know though (honestly).
You can go and watch Putin's speeches directly. He goes from saying it's to simply protect Russians in Donbass, to saying it's actually to stop NATO's expansion (countries should be free to choose their alliances--people ally with NATO because they don't want Russia invading their country, and invading their country only makes NATO seem more necessary), to saying it's really that Ukraine is entirely controlled by Nazis and needs to be de-nazified... by sending in the nazi Wagner mercenary group to kill a country run by a Jewish president who pretended to be gay on TV, to outright denying the historical existence of the Ukrainian people or their country and that it's just supposed to be Russian territory. All these speeches were in the span of literal days and show he just gave up on trying to hide his actual reasons.
You can completely ignore all western media if you like. You can completely assume all of what Ukraine says is absolute lies. All you need to do is listen to the words directly out of Putin's mouth and it's immediately obvious that it's the most transparent bullshit to justify a land grab that there ever was.