[yamtaddle]

Not necessarily US firms. And making it feel authentic could just mean they didn't fuck up.

Again, I'm not saying the Ukrainians didn't do this themselves. They may have. Or there may be some obscure books few people read in 30 years that tell the story of the companies NATO paid to prep the Ukrainians to win the propaganda war.

I'm pro-Ukraine (of course?) but I doubt there's anyone who's dipped more than a toe into poli sci and international studies who's not had this through cross their mind, on seeing how fast, consistent, excellent, and on-all-fronts Ukraine's public information warfare has been. It's not exactly a way-out-there possibility. And if they did it's not like that's necessarily a bad thing. Just... don't be surprised if there are some pieces about how much more there was behind the scenes to make that happen, in Foreign Affairs or something, that only politics nerds will ever read, in a few years.

[orwin]

Whats confounding to me is how disciplined they are with media coverage. Early in the war, you could follow Ukrainian retreat, Russian "misfires" into civilian habitations, russian frontline advance etc. I thought to myself that any counteroffensive couldn't be done secretly and that the war would be fought inch by inch. I was obviously very wrong (i'm not remotely educated on this questions, i just really like planes).

They still upload combat footage to diverse repo, but nowadays its less accessible and more delayed, sometime 5 days "late".