Which is fine, the authors can believe the Russian government if you want, but declaring the statements of the other side "fake" on only that basis isn't very credible.
Again, the source that your other comment cites is a Kremlin propaganda outlet. There's little reason to trust it to accurately represent Ukraine government's position on anything related to this war.
It looks genuine, but it could also be a fake written as part of Ukrainian information war.
While everything in this article looks very plausible, it could just as well be written by an outsider with good understanding of Russian politics. In that case it could be a bit skewed to paint a more optimistic picture (or if you will pessimistic from Russia's perspective).
I feel like you're trying to add something to it that's not there. I never claimed that everything is fake that is out there, only that I assume it is until verified later. I don't consume social media, and the only time I see stuff is when people directly link to it. However, my personal position is that if it is coming out on social media first, in my mind it absolutely 100% gets flagged as potentially fake/needs verification. And if you think the Ukraine content isn't being PR managed by either side, then I think maybe you're their target audience.
Heh, this site offers as much "proof", as those shady news sites no one has ever heard of which pro-Russian internet trolls use to "prove" that there's no Russian invasion in Eastern Ukraine.
The parallels between the techniques employed by the anti-GG/SJW crowd and those of the Russian state propaganda are uncanny.
Unfortunately there is a tremendous amount of propaganda being peddled by all actors involved in this war. This is just objective reality and the nature of war, though partisans on one side or the other want to pretend that everything "their side" states are facts while everything the "other side" states are lies. Amazingly, some of this propaganda is being openly pushed despite being debunked, by people who admit that it is false propaganda! The rationale offered is that fake stories are okay if they "increase morale" (by those who seemingly lack the capacity to understand the concept of credibility or its importance).
Among unbiased observers with a grasp of the situation it is clear that Russia could be doing much more damage to Ukrainian cities, and we can only speculate as to why that is. They could be trying to save munitions, they could be doing it for public relations purposes, they could be doing it because they want relatively intact cities if they eventually succeed in taking over Ukraine, or any number of other reasons.
The one thing you can be sure about, is that anyone who claims to know with certainty what is happening in the war zone, or what the "true" motivation of Russia is at the current time, can be safely disregarded as someone who is either confused or pushing an agenda.
This goes to show that the media (and especially social media) has once again easily manipulated its readers with fake news stories of this 'Ghost of Kyiv' like this from the BBC and other news sources [0] and it has been repeatedly debunked [1] and now they finally admit it was fake news.
And No. There is no'good' disinformation. It is very safe to say that especially in a war, ALL disinformation is bad. Zero exceptions.
What excellent fakes are you talking about? A lot of claims by each side are just that, claims. For example, Ukraine claims to shot down two huge Russian IL-76 planes, but I haven’t seen any photos or videos of these yet, fake or real. In this case, I think we’ll find out if it’s true soon enough. Similarly, Russia claims that the high-rise in Kiev has been hit by Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile. That’s also just a claim, with no evidence as of yet.
Everything that pushes the required narrative gets massively upvoted and accepted as truth without verification, even if falsified later (like the “Ghost of Kyiv” which turned out to be screenshots from a video game)
You can try it yourself. Take a random picture from Google and put a made-up caption on it and note the results.
I guess that’s better than relying on official government sources without verifying and presenting it as fact. Think New York Times, and the Iraq wmd bullshit. Or basically anything that quotes official Ukrainian government sources as fact instead of putting strong caveats that the information is released in a controlled manner as of the war effort and may not reflect actual facts.
> For Eastern Ukraine specifically, this has included a supposed infiltration by Ukrainian saboteurs into Russia. [2] Geolocation of the footage (taken from the helmet of one of the Ukrainian soldiers that supposedly participated in the infiltration) debunked the story within an hour after it turned out that the supposed incursion into Russian territory was carried out from separatist-held territory. [3] Rather than showing the bodies of the five Ukrainian soldiers that were supposedly killed in the raid, Russia instead showed a destroyed BTR-70M armoured personnel carrier (APC) that was painted in an ill-conceived attempt to make it look like a Ukrainian vehicle. [4] Ironically, Ukraine doesn't even operate the BTR-70M, further showing the attention (or lack thereof) that goes into these false flag operations.
You can believe the information coming out of the war zone is too corrupted to draw conclusions without being motivated by wanting to disagree with the New York Times.
There have been several major, heavily hyped stories about the war so far that just weeks later were admitted to be deliberate lies to booster Ukrainian morale. The Ghost of Kiev and his many kills: never existed. The "fuck you Russian battleship" guy who turned out to be captured, not heroically self sacrificed. Etc. These events weren't mere exaggerations, they were entirely made up.
Given this it's pretty reasonable for rational people to assume we have no idea how the war is going. After all, for every made up Russian kill that gets detected there must be many more that don't. And the same in the opposite direction with Russian state media of course.
The only fake stories and propaganda I’ve seen so far are from the Ukrainians:
- Ghost of Kiev using ARMA Footage.
No evidence this person exists.
- Miss Ukraine fighting in Kiev.
It was an airsoft gun. She says she isn’t fighting.
- Snake Island soldiers killed after heroic standoff.
They all surrendered.
- Nuclear Reactor shelled, radiation rising.
A training building was involved in a relatively small firefight. Reactor was never in danger and radiation levels didn’t change.
The training building that caught fire was outside of the perimeter of the reactor complex and there is no evidence of “shelling”, which means heavy artillery.
—
People debate if this is a needed part of the information war, and I’m not here to go back and fourth on that.
I am curious what Russian propaganda or information ops look like in the west because I haven’t seen them yet. (I’m not a social media user)
Does anyone have examples?
Edit: Added details for clarity.
I’m a trained former nuclear submarine sailor, and current Army Officer, so this engagement sits at a nexus of my unique experience.
I guess it's intentional. Ukranian propaganda and fakes are fine because they foster the desired narrative. No one cares about your desire to be informed and to make your own conclusions.
I do not support Russia in this conflict and hope they are defeated and that Ukraine regains sovereignty over the territory within its post-Soviet borders.
That being said, the DW deboonking here is extremely selective. It's almost as if, for example, American entertainer Jon Stewart hadn't feted an Azov Battalion member on a stage at Disney World a few months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zoB_6c0cag The man in question has a black sun tattoo on one elbow and covered it up with a length of red stocking for the event.
The past several years have taught me to be extremely suspicious of most "fact checks"/"debunks"/"prebunks" and anything purporting to be an anti-disinfo or anti-misinfo project.
Are you saying that all the publicly accessible satellite footage showing Russian troop movements is fake?
Are you saying that the discredited Russian false flag attacks in separatist areas didn’t happen? (A fact anyone can verify by looking at the metadata of those videos)
Are you saying that the Russians are lying when they confirm these troop movements? Are you saying they lied when they publicly stated that they’re considering military action in Ukraine?
What exactly are you trying to say? These are very real independently verifiable facts known to the whole world.
- civilian deaths in Donbas during 2014-2021 from Ukraine military action?
- Coup
- legislation measures for gross restriction of Russian language usage
Calling data you do not like Russian propaganda is weak.
I was making a joke. It's unfortunately, but most of the fakes come from the Ukrainian side - the like the heroic Snake Island solider, the girl showing how to drive an abandon Russian tank, or the model-turned-warrior, and other fakes.
If the accused admit to something it's more believable than the alternative (that they were forced into false admission).
So in this case if the Ukrainian government admit to making things up then I would think it's believable that they made something up for the sake of propaganda. We can also check more independent sources --read Japanese news, or Indian news sources, etc.
This article for example is just re-printing Russian government talking points:
https://waronfakes.com/civil/fake-russian-soldiers-wont-let-...
Which is fine, the authors can believe the Russian government if you want, but declaring the statements of the other side "fake" on only that basis isn't very credible.
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