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Comment by m0llusk | Hacker News Reader

What is this garbage? Everyone knows that Russia was responsible because they were the only ones around. The consequences were obviously a disaster. Why are you lying?

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Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note this one:

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

The argument goes that calling it a "disaster" is shortening the phrase "natural disaster". This isn't entirely true; there are man-made disasters like global warming or pollution. However, when talking about an intentionally caused man-made disaster, we don't usually call that a disaster, we call it an atrocity or a war crime, and we name and shame who caused it.

Half of spin is headline craft.

Cool your jets, there is no lying here. squidbeak knows Russia did it and is criticizing the headline for the passive voice "Dam disaster" which doesn't make the intentional nature of the disaster caused by Russia clear.

> is criticizing the headline for the passive voice "Dam disaster"

Because I love picking nits, that headline does not contain even a single instance of the passive voice.

The intentional nature of the disaster is not an established and proven fact. It suits Ukrainian narrative of painting everything that Russia does as yet another heinous genocidal act, but at least in some cases (including this one) negligence is also a plausible explanation (i.e. it could happen because of not paying enough attention to maintenance and stocking ammunition where it should not be) [1]. This of course does not remove responsibility from Russia: even if in a very unlikely scenario it was sabotaged by Ukraine as Russia claims, it would not happen if Russia has not invaded Ukraine. Still it is important to have an objective view on the events to make sure that real crimes get enough attention from the public and that proper investigation of the events is done. That said, given that we do not have yet a better understanding of what has happened, the headline is accurate enough and complaints about it look like pro-Ukrainian propaganda rather than an attempt to share the truth.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20230608002006/https://www.nytim...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37708114

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