It's a really good strategy, in fact. I think it's extremely clever, though possibly not wise. It's just warfare. Nothing so unusual about it, and historically

It's a really good strategy, in fact. I think it's extremely clever, though possibly not wise. It's just warfare. Nothing so unusual about it, and historically not reserved to just Russians. Maybe that 'whataboutism' factor will sway them to permit me to suggest, here, that this is a window into a well-established Russian tactic, and it's the clarity of that window which has led to their mad scramble to suppress this information: including but not limited to the manipulation of Hacker News information management systems. This is directly beneficial to them: the manipulation of COVID opinion not only turns enemy citizens against each other, but directly keeps a deadly and damaging virus alive and mutating in the wild. That is an immediate dividend when you're doing it on the territory of your geopolitical enemy. Nothing new about this. And nothing 'without dividend' about it, either. It's pretty direct warfare through nontraditional methods, understandable if war is what you're waging. The traditional Russian way to handle this sort of thing is to get your message out across the widest possible range of mouthpieces. You are not taking sides, you are heightening the chaos and setting everybody up to mistrust everybody else. It's called the 'Zone' and is a well documented technique. Harmful to anything but an authoritarian system (and, I think, prone to worsen conditions even for that) but obviously effective.