[itsoktocry]

>I've had a hard time with this one as for weeks it was "Russia is not advancing, yada yada"

Same here. I consider myself a big consumer of news from a variety of sources, and it's hard to get nearly any perspective except "Ukraine is dominating the battlefield". It's strange times, but this is the information war.

[dash2]

Have you considered the possibility that if everything says one thing, that's because it is true? Maybe the Russians genuinely haven't done very well.

I think there are too many Cartesians sitting in front of their screens going "perhaps an evil demon is trying to fool me about everything!"

[pueblito]

I think there is a natural instinct to not believe things that are obviously propaganda, so when confronted by a party telling an obvious fantasy it’s pretty important to get the other party’s version, even if also nonsense and hope to suss out the truth.

[notahacker]

You don't have to look very hard for the other side's version though.

Question is whether you think "Russia made a planned withdrawal from the north of the country after completing all the objectives of this military exercise which definitely isn't a war" is a more plausible description of the short-lived invasion of the north of the country than "Russia's advances have slowed down... Russia stopped advancing... Russia is retreating...". Both narratives agree that the facts on the ground are that Russian troops made large scale incursions into the north of Ukraine but aren't there any more.

Yes, most Western media has sought to emphasize Russian casualties over Ukrainian ones and Ukrainian minor success over Russian ones, but it's not like Western media hasn't been free to predict Russia will have full control of Mariupol in a couple of days for over a month now and talk up the Russian convoy advancing on Kyiv which never made it there, or like the official Russian narrative isn't palpably absurd.

[PoignardAzur]

I mean, you don't fire large numbers of intelligence agents and generals in the middle of a war because you're winning.

Propaganda is one thing, but right now every report we have, incoming from Russian state media, points in the direction of "Russia is getting their ass kicked".

[watwut]

The baseline expectation was Ukraine folding within 3-4 days. They were doing much better then expected, Russian original plan folded entirely.

[dragonwriter]

> The baseline expectation was Ukraine folding within 3-4 days

I think the West expected better but not lot better, it does seem that was about what Russia expected (possibly on bad political intelligence on how the population would respond to an invasion.)

[watwut]

To me, it seemed that west expected Ukraine to fold too. And the west also have circles that admire Russia quite a lot while Ukraine was not taken seriously until they started to be serious in battle field.

You still have fawning over Russian this and that, culture, shock over their army being disorganized and corrupt or looting etc, despite them being like that always. While Ukraine was mostly non-existent.

[dragonwriter]

> To me, it seemed that west expected Ukraine to fold too

That was pretty explicitly stated by a number of officials, I just get the feeling that they thought the timeline would be longer than what the Russians were thinking, but probably in the 2-3 week window for the government, in any meaningful form, holding out, with the situation, at best being guerilla resistance after that.

[yucky]

>Russian original plan folded entirely.

It's funny, I don't recall seeing any pro-Russian sources stating that the goal was to capture all of Ukraine. In fact, they've publicly stated their goals since the beginning, and annexing all of Ukraine was never listed. Where did this idea in the media come from, since it didn't come from Russia..?

[lobocinza]

Because a state-run news site accidentally published a victory article.

"Ukraine has returned to Russia...It will be reorganized, re-established and returned to its natural state as part of the Russian world...[Russia, Belarus and Ukraine will now act] in geopolitical terms as a single whole,"

https://www.newsweek.com/state-run-russian-news-site-acciden...

Also if you take the time to notice what Putin is saying and doing you will realize that denazification = genocide. The goal was not to arrest Hitler's fans but to destroy Ukrainian nationality.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-genocide-handbook

From Wikipedia.

"Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people — usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group — in whole or in part."

[yucky]

>denazification = genocide

Interesting take.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Firstly, the claim that Russia is actually doing actual "denazification" is such obvious rubbish that no sentient informed person should come close to believing it.

What they do is far more informative than what they say. What they say also includes Mr Putin's frankly unhinged speeches calling for more Russian Lebensraum.

Second, the point of such disinformation is not necessarily to make everyone believe this story, but to muddy that waters so much that people are no longer sure where the truth lies, they either fall back to the "well, there must be truth on both sides" or just give up on ever finding out the truth.

Thus, this kind of disinformation does not need to even be self-consistent or even that believable. But it does need to be relentlessly sent out.

[yucky]

The Ukrainian Azov Battalion is very much proudly Nazi in their ideology, and they don't hide it. Where does this defense of them and their Nazi ideology come from? Nobody disputes they are Nazi's and yet we are supposed to defend them because Russia is the aggressor? Or is there another reason?

[mcphage]

> In fact, they've publicly stated their goals since the beginning, and annexing all of Ukraine was never listed.

Well, their publicly stated goal was "this is a training exercise how dare you accuse us of anything", and we all saw how much truth there was to that.

[yucky]

It makes perfect sense not to trust everything Putin says. That doesn't answer the questions though - where did our media get the idea that Russia ever intended on annexing all of Ukraine? They tell us this was a goal, but what is the source of that claim? Russia never made that claim. Only some in the media have, shouldn't we expect sources for claims like that?

[mcphage]

I think the primary source was the presence of the army that invaded Ukraine, and attempted to seize the capital.

[yucky]

..and the central city of Kyiv was the furthest east Russia ever went, which leads us back to the question of where people got the idea that Russia ever intended to annex all of Ukraine.

[pseudalopex]

What you replied to said nothing about annexing all of Ukraine. Almost all evidence suggests Russia expected they would capture Kyiv and Ukraine would capitulate quickly.

[yucky]

Except Putin has publicly stated his goals since before the invasion and during, and they've not publicly changed. And at no point was annexing all of Ukraine a stated goal. I only bring it up because I'm curious where it came from.

[mcphage]

> Except Putin has publicly stated his goals since before the invasion and during, and they've not publicly changed.

Sometimes what a person says and a person does don’t agree. In situations like that—you don’t need to believe what they say! You can just accept they lied and move on.