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how much of this was contributed to banning all reporting from the Russian side of things? right now the atmosphere is like if you even remotely suggest that Ru

how much of this was contributed to banning all reporting from the Russian side of things? right now the atmosphere is like if you even remotely suggest that Russia is actually making slow progress despite losses you are viewed as supporting Russia! Yet what the fixation on Kyiv is doing is it's pulling resources away from the south and Donentsk/Lukansk area where the Ukraine army is in real danger of being completely surrounded. There is heavy propaganda and disinformation from both Russia and Ukraine but what we've done in the West is effectively ban impartiality. Never before have we seen this level of zealous emotions since WW2. @JominiW on twitter does a very good explanation of various political and military objectives and the strategic movement of the Russian forces and he's repeatedly called out the dangers of believing the enemy is a paper tiger. We've seen all sorts of incompetence from the Russian side and Ukrainian forces have done a good job of defending Kyiv but we forget that Ukraine is not just Kyiv, it is slowly being swallowed up from all directions. This is called target fixation and it's going to shock a lot of people who only follows one side. Best thing to do in an unpredictable and volatile situation is to not fixate on one view. We will shortly know in the coming weeks what will happen, if Putin makes significant grounds, he has more chips to gamble/make demands. If Putin fails here, he has no choice to escalate in ways that was previously thought unimaginable. It doesn't help that US/NATO alliance is adamant on not escalating to WW3 yet they sanction every Russian, despite their objections to war and Putin, in some extremely liberal naivete that the Russians will rise up against an authoritarian government who is ready to use small scale nukes if need be.

CRConrad 5y ago
> what we've done in the West is effectively ban impartiality. WTF is there to be "impartial" about?
jatone 5y ago
yeah fog of war makes understanding the situation as a 3rd party cumbersome. I've essentially given up and just going to wait and see what falls out.
yladiz 5y ago
> we forget that Ukraine is not just Kyiv, it is slowly being swallowed up from all directions Except we haven’t forgotten, news orgs are reporting on things happening outside of Kyiv. Russia seems to have really overplayed their hand because they were barely able to take Kherson after like a week, and can’t even take bigger cities like Kharkiv, even with intense shelling. Russia may not be a paper tiger, but they sure can’t do much against an enemy many times smaller than them.
- soperj 5y ago
  >Russia may not be a paper tiger, but they sure can’t do much against an enemy many times smaller than them. How long did it take for the US to take Afghanistan?
  - jquery 5y ago
    Iraq was on the other side of the world from us, not next door, and we took that over in a matter of days.
    - WJW 5y ago
      Not to be too picky about the details, but it took about three weeks to finally get to Bagdad. The Ukrainian conflict has not been going quite that long.
    - JacobiX 5y ago
      Just to correct the info: the invasion of Iraq (a much weaker country) by the combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland lasted just over one month … but it’s not really comparable situation here for the reasons you pointed.
  - pstuart 5y ago
    Never.
  - belval 5y ago
    The logistics of taking a country that is thousands of miles away are very different from taking one you share a border with. It took 47 days to take Kabul, counting from the first day the CIA agents were sent to prepare the invasion. Furthermore, the objective was to find bin Laden, not to take cities. The war in Ukraine isn't really comparable to Afghanistan. The US mostly "softened" strategic objectives with air strikes, whereas Russia can't/won't do that in Ukraine.
NicoJuicy 5y ago
> ban impartiality What ban was impartial?
jcadam 5y ago
If Putin fails in Ukraine, he'll be forced from power in Russia. He has no reason to give up and every reason to continue until he can claim at least some sort of victory.
- deutschew 5y ago
  What is clear is that Putin is highly paranoid and has been since taking power and he's willing to commit crimes against humanity to stay in power. He's already announced he is willing to use nukes if threatened and NATO will not respond unless multiple re-entry vehicles carrying nukes rain on their cities. He could do a lot here by using small scale nukes that don't create huge fallouts even. If you were Putin, does it not make sense that his least trusted, potentially disloyal officers, generals would be on the frontlines and hope they don't come back?
  - 13415 5y ago
    Putin is not that unrealistic, he knows very well that even just one nuke would make Russia a pariah state for the next 100 years at least. Even China would turn their back on them. Turning Russia into a second North Korea was never Putin's plan.
matthewmacleod 5y ago
I think you're overreacting. There is literally an article on the homepage of The Guardian today that explicitly talks about the over-focus on Kyiv https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/08/kyiv-deadlock-contrasts-russia-worrying-south-ukraine-war-progress https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/08/kyiv-deadlock-...
astrange 5y ago
The accounts I follow (like @OSINTtechnical) are careful to point out that Russia is doing relatively well in the south of Ukraine but I’ve never seen a believable analysis that they actually are doing well, and I’ve looked. The ones out there are base contrarianism, usually disproven in the next day or two. In particular they assume Russia somehow controls land by driving straight past it so it gets marked red on the map. Still, it doesn’t change their ability to flatten any city they want. And the lack of any good successor government in Russia to allow the current one to collapse, so they have nothing to lose. In the end it’s all Larry Summers’ fault, like everything else in the world.
simion314 5y ago
I just checked and you can access Russian state media, so have at it please https://ria.ru https://ria.ru - I don't speak Russian but from my research this is state owned media, please if others know better can we prove that if you really want to read Russia propaganda it is still possible, you just need a bit more effort then opening FB or twiiter or your TV
- Kliment 5y ago
  I understand Russian. Looking at ria.ru over the past few days there is barely any mention of the war, certainly no details, there's much more mention of sanctions but only some weird stories about their origin and motivation.
NoboruWataya 5y ago
> right now the atmosphere is like if you even remotely suggest that Russia is actually making slow progress despite losses you are viewed as supporting Russia! Only on Twitter and Reddit. Look at conventional media and they are mostly discussing Russian gains in the south, while occasionally mentioning that their advance has ground to a halt in the north.

CRConrad 5y ago

> what we've done in the West is effectively ban impartiality. WTF is there to be "impartial" about?

jatone 5y ago

yeah fog of war makes understanding the situation as a 3rd party cumbersome. I've essentially given up and just going to wait and see what falls out.

yladiz 5y ago

> we forget that Ukraine is not just Kyiv, it is slowly being swallowed up from all directions Except we haven’t forgotten, news orgs are reporting on things happening outside of Kyiv. Russia seems to have really overplayed their hand because they were barely able to take Kherson after like a week, and can’t even take bigger cities like Kharkiv, even with intense shelling. Russia may not be a paper tiger, but they sure can’t do much against an enemy many times smaller than them.

soperj 5y ago
>Russia may not be a paper tiger, but they sure can’t do much against an enemy many times smaller than them. How long did it take for the US to take Afghanistan?
- jquery 5y ago
  Iraq was on the other side of the world from us, not next door, and we took that over in a matter of days.
  - WJW 5y ago
    Not to be too picky about the details, but it took about three weeks to finally get to Bagdad. The Ukrainian conflict has not been going quite that long.
  - JacobiX 5y ago
    Just to correct the info: the invasion of Iraq (a much weaker country) by the combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland lasted just over one month … but it’s not really comparable situation here for the reasons you pointed.
- pstuart 5y ago
  Never.
- belval 5y ago
  The logistics of taking a country that is thousands of miles away are very different from taking one you share a border with. It took 47 days to take Kabul, counting from the first day the CIA agents were sent to prepare the invasion. Furthermore, the objective was to find bin Laden, not to take cities. The war in Ukraine isn't really comparable to Afghanistan. The US mostly "softened" strategic objectives with air strikes, whereas Russia can't/won't do that in Ukraine.

NicoJuicy 5y ago

> ban impartiality What ban was impartial?

jcadam 5y ago

If Putin fails in Ukraine, he'll be forced from power in Russia. He has no reason to give up and every reason to continue until he can claim at least some sort of victory.

deutschew 5y ago
What is clear is that Putin is highly paranoid and has been since taking power and he's willing to commit crimes against humanity to stay in power. He's already announced he is willing to use nukes if threatened and NATO will not respond unless multiple re-entry vehicles carrying nukes rain on their cities. He could do a lot here by using small scale nukes that don't create huge fallouts even. If you were Putin, does it not make sense that his least trusted, potentially disloyal officers, generals would be on the frontlines and hope they don't come back?
- 13415 5y ago
  Putin is not that unrealistic, he knows very well that even just one nuke would make Russia a pariah state for the next 100 years at least. Even China would turn their back on them. Turning Russia into a second North Korea was never Putin's plan.

matthewmacleod 5y ago

I think you're overreacting. There is literally an article on the homepage of The Guardian today that explicitly talks about the over-focus on Kyiv https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/08/kyiv-deadlock-contrasts-russia-worrying-south-ukraine-war-progress https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/08/kyiv-deadlock-...

astrange 5y ago

The accounts I follow (like @OSINTtechnical) are careful to point out that Russia is doing relatively well in the south of Ukraine but I’ve never seen a believable analysis that they actually are doing well, and I’ve looked. The ones out there are base contrarianism, usually disproven in the next day or two. In particular they assume Russia somehow controls land by driving straight past it so it gets marked red on the map. Still, it doesn’t change their ability to flatten any city they want. And the lack of any good successor government in Russia to allow the current one to collapse, so they have nothing to lose. In the end it’s all Larry Summers’ fault, like everything else in the world.

simion314 5y ago

I just checked and you can access Russian state media, so have at it please https://ria.ru https://ria.ru - I don't speak Russian but from my research this is state owned media, please if others know better can we prove that if you really want to read Russia propaganda it is still possible, you just need a bit more effort then opening FB or twiiter or your TV

Kliment 5y ago
I understand Russian. Looking at ria.ru over the past few days there is barely any mention of the war, certainly no details, there's much more mention of sanctions but only some weird stories about their origin and motivation.

NoboruWataya 5y ago

> right now the atmosphere is like if you even remotely suggest that Russia is actually making slow progress despite losses you are viewed as supporting Russia! Only on Twitter and Reddit. Look at conventional media and they are mostly discussing Russian gains in the south, while occasionally mentioning that their advance has ground to a halt in the north.