Whenever I read articles like this, I can't help but feel that I'm being sold a narrative of some sort. It's hard to filter through all the noise...
One example; A Russian warship has sunk. This has been confirmed by the Russians, so that part is a fact. However, while the Ukranian side claims it was done by Ukranian anti-ship cruise missiles, the Russians claim it was "just" a fire / incident on board.
I mean personally am more likely to believe the side that isn't the aggressor and isn't run by an authoritarian person / government, but the news I follow didn't make any calls themselves; they just reported what the one AND the other side claimed, plus the facts (yesterday of a Russian warship being on fire, today of it having sank).
Large scale things on contrary are far easier to spot, at least at a certain scale and at a certain extent. For instance when we keep reading "the Russian bombing hospitals, theaters and schools" it's evidently propaganda not because "Russians are good" vs "Russians are bad" but because missiles&co are not that cheap nor that abundant so an error can always happen, but normally no one army in the world waste ammo for nothing and as a result if those bombing are true then means Ukrainian army choose to violate Geneva conventions recycling hospitals, theaters, schools etc for military purposes and than as a result for the other side they became legit targets. But as always people at scale do not like to reason, prefer being fed with emotions.
With similar simple reasoning following the classic Latin cui prodest we can easy conclude that this war is needed by USA and UK élites against the EU, Ukraine and Russian interest. Unfortunately for those élites that move means pushing Russia toward China witch is less weak alone than Russia and far more important with Russian natural resources and a far augmented military tech transfer from Russia China will arrive in few years to have enough military capacity to counter USA and UK together. Those élites play the same game they have played with nazi Germany, counting on similar outcome, of course as back then against their own citizens interests. On the other side Russia need safety at their western borders, for them nazis are ok-ish if on their side, not ok if on NATO side, so they haven't really choice but go to war. China needs stability to keep growing, as any dictatorship that need to grow, but also to sustain it's population. There is no morale on all sides, just mix of interests, some legit some criminal, and different school of thoughts confronting.
Russia is mostly using in Ukraine (like before in Syria) dirt cheap unguided WWII style bombs, like FAB-250 (550lb) and FAB-500 (1100lb).
> if those bombing are true then means Ukrainian army choose to violate Geneva conventions recycling hospitals, theaters, schools etc for military purposes and than as a result for the other side they became legit targets.
You forgot to update your Russian propaganda version to spread. For example Russia hitting the Mariupol hospital because there supposedly was an Ukrainian army command center is the old version of their propaganda. Now they tell that they didn't hit the hospital, and that there were no Ukrainian military there, and it was just a real hospital which Ukrainians intentionally blown up.
This is disingenuous. Russia has a long history of bombing civilians as a psychological weapon. Both Grozny and Aleppo are well documented. Your arguments “the Russians are not stupid, so if they seem to be doing stupid, then it’s propaganda” rests on very faulty premises. They are not stupid, and are deliberately targeting civilian populations. We know their doctrine and we have seen their playbook. You are only carrying water here and your rhetorics are obvious.
> With similar simple reasoning following the classic Latin cui prodest we can easy conclude that this war is needed by USA and UK élites against the EU, Ukraine and Russian interest.
This is an interesting conspiracy theory.
> On the other side Russia need safety at their western borders, for them nazis are ok-ish if on their side, not ok if on NATO side, so they haven't really choice but go to war.
Come off it. NATO is an existential threat to Russia only if Russia’s existence depends on being able to invade its neighbours. The fact that its former satellites ran to the West at the moment they got the chance is telling. If they wanted stability, they’d have increased cooperation instead of rattling their metaphorical sabre for 20 years. NATO was not more menacing 2 months ago than it was 20 years ago, quite the contrary. It was desegregating before being reinvigorated by this stupid, pointless agression. Finland and Sweden applying was unimaginable just a couple of weeks ago. If stability was the point, a hot war was the absolute last thing to do.
Also, is there any evidence, even circumstantial, that Ukraine has a significantly larger nazi relative population compared to any surrounding country? Its government is just as incompetent and corrupt as you’d expect given the context. Where are their nazi policies?
You seem to be making a lot of effort to sound reasonable, but ultimately
All countries have attacked civilians, did you remember WWII USA in Europe mass bombing even on ally countries? Iraqi ones? French ones in Libya and Siria? NATO Belgrade siege? But their purpose is evident: WWII mass bombing were used to force rich European countries to reconstruct under the Marshall plan agreements a thing would not happen if those countries were not so badly treated, modern bombing in Iraq &c was done for similar reasons, less ample now, but equally in principles: making room for western private companies big earnings. Russia do not have such targets, they are meaningless for them, they do not have the western military-industrial complex, most of their activities are still public in military and health domains, private activities suffer more from sanctions and war than the outcome [1], they advance slowly and methodically clearly to minimize damages in area they want operational under their control.
[1] to a point I suspect some western sanctions are negotiated with Putin gov. to hit some oligarchs he dislike...
Major cities like Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol are shelled with dumb, indiscriminate weapons - Soviet free fall bombs from the 60’s, MLRS with unguided rockets. This stuff is cheap and plenty.
There residential areas where hundreds of thousands lived, now completely destroyed. There are videos, photos, everything. Yet you succumb to nice Russians narrative.
WWII bombing was mass bombing, with no precision target, '60s missiles are far more precise and absolutely not that cheap nor abundant and there is no military reason to mass using them even if you have a significant stockpile to bomb a residential area if this area is not filled by enemy forces. A practice mercenaries always use in war, regardless of their nationality, because that's the classic asymmetric war.
If I succumb to Russian narrative (curious, since I've cited western governmental sources to sustain my claims not TASS or Ria Novosti) you equally succumb to Bernaysian western propaganda. Being from EU BTW my own interest in on the Russian side, our major supplier, fellow European till the Urals (so Moscow included), not on the USA/UK side since those two equally do their best to pick our tech&talentsm put us one against each other (a thing we do remarkably well, shame on us for that) and do countless more or less discrete criminal and not criminal actions against us. The USA after WWII have transformed my home country (Italy) into the Mafiastan just to stop CLN Alta Italia (the major Resistence body of the country) to really becoming a democratic government, the UK help very well fueling corruption (a significant local weakness) by all means and imposing a redesign of public school to form a new kind of citizens unable to reason and act as Citizens. That after the UK itself have funded mussolini to became a dictator, that after Wall Street have founded hitler till the first year of WWII at least. Saying USA an UK obviously I'm talking about their ruling class, not their citizens that equally pay the price of their ruler business against their own interests.
Just consider a thing: EU countries can only blame themselves for their status from world superpower to a disaster, BUT Russians never invade US, while we try invading Russia few times, USA and UK and the world their ruling class represent have do so, few times. Even from history we are on opposite sides. And that's history not russian propaganda.
Or it's just a fact... I guess some people may think Ukrainian's are blowing up those palces themselves, or making it up. But this is not really the first time in history of indiscriminate bombings have been happening to terrorize the population of some place into submission/demoralization out of spite. (And I guess it will not be the first time, where it may strenghten such population's resolve, looking at you London...)
> but normally no one army in the world waste ammo for nothing
You seem to just explain away the fact that these places are being bombed/shelled with some reasoning amounting to "makes no sense to me, therefore it must be propaganda", without knowing about current leadership's real decision making, or taking into account results of any fact finding missions, like OSCE's.
All I can agree on is that we don't know for sure if it's a policy. But it sure looked like it was a policy in Syria, in addition to an apparent campaign to demonize the civil service and health care workers, so it's not really out of question. Especially not because of some flimsy reasoning about "I don't know who would benefit". Qucks like a duck, looks like a duck, etc.
I guess to understand the scale of the issue... to see if it's more like an active terror campaign with a city/village being shelled every single day (like the joint Russian/Assad terror campaigns in the northwest of Syria), or more like something else.
If it looks more like a former, then yes, I'll accept that UA gov doesn't care about civilians there.
I mean few weeks ago Italian main TV channel have passed "the bombing of Kiev" witch was recognized quickly as a cut-scene of the game War Thunder. Then various westerns media have publish a news about a correspondent killed on duty, the same one declared killed an year or so in Kabul. Other medias show pictures of crying women saying they are Ukrainian in tears for the Russian bombing, actually those photos came from AFP/2014 and were really Ukrainian women in tears, only they were Russian-speaking ones in tear for Euromaidan massacres.
Since I'm not there, not I know in person anyone there I can't say who bombed who nor if there war really such bombing at all. While I can reason at the macro level, because at micro level anyone can say no matter what it's next to impossible prove that true or false if not done so badly like actual propaganda, but at larger scale is equally next to impossible hiding things and reasoning about their real reasons is far easier.
Of course the fact that me, myself and I fails to see a sense in something does not disprove that something, but connecting dots help and the actual propaganda, on both sides, reached a level that's very easy to spot it.
As to the document you posted... That document is not from OSCE. OSCE just added a header to it. It's entirey written by https://democracyfund.ru/ . So it can hardly be described as created by a "western body". Also OSCE is not a purely western body anyway. It includes Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and many other eastern european countries.
Most importantly, it's not a report from an official fact finding mission (which is a specialist endeavor to send observers to a location to gather facts regardless of the meaning of such facts, like movements and activities of armed forces, shots being fired, destroyed property, documenting casualties, etc.) with summary statistics, etc. The document you posted is composed of random interviews with released prisoners from UA prisons. I guess it has some value, torture by UA security apparatus may have been happening as described, but it's not relevant to what I asked for in my reply to you. (which was to take into account results from actual fact finding missions, which is about documented facts, not about interviews or hearsay)
And yes, news outlets are about clicks and speed and some about shock value, as we know. I agree with you that they sometimes report complete crap. Everyone needs to take individual news reports with a grain of salt. Game footage was reported as actual war footage by a Russian embassy on twitter during Syria war. There's stupidity on both sides, you know. ;)
Example:
> Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine to force it to renounce the West and to submit to the Kremlin
I wonder what's their source, based on Putin's declarations this should be:
> Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine to force it to renounce the West and to remain neutral because it's located between the west and russia and because the west promised it
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-e...