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The morale is such that Russia imprisons people who call this a war and any reporting other than rehashing official PR statements is banned, all independent med
by mopsi 5y ago
The morale is such that Russia imprisons people who call this a war and any reporting other than rehashing official PR statements is banned, all independent media has been shut down. In official statements, there's only a limited "special operation" against "Neo-Nazi drug addicts" in Ukraine and it's going well, while on the ground everything's falling apart and in some sectors they've deployed rear troops that shoot their own soldiers if they attempt to retreat. Some POWs have even described how their units executed own wounded soldiers to avoid having to deal with treating them.
All in all, thousands of Russian service members have died, but Russian representatives refuse to collect bodies from Ukrainian authorities for proper burial. Relatives are kept in the dark. Many will receive a letter months from now saying that their father/husband/son died in undefined military exercise. Those relatives who speak up get a visit from security service intimidating them into shutting up.
It's a total nightmare. There'd be a violent revolution the next day if Russian TV showed truth for one evening: orthodox churches burning, entire towns razed to ground, kids getting limbs blown off from cluster munitions dropped onto residential areas, all kinds of unimaginable suffering.
The scale of this is such that there's no way to conceal truth for an extended period of time. It will lead to implosion of Russian society just like the Afghan war did in the 1980s.
- freeopinion 5y agoThe truth is readily available in Russia. But just like everywhere else, truth and lies are rejected or embraced regardless of how flimsy or strong they are. Human bias and other psychology can be astounding.
- mopsi 5y agoThe scary thing is that there's no TV or radio channel to tune to or a newspaper to buy that would offer an alternative, truthful take. Even foreign press suspended activities in Russia after the March 4th law that made independent reporting punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Determined people may seek out independent online sources if they can digest that everything they've been told is a lie, but that's an insignificant fraction of the whole population and their activism is mercilessly crushed by security services. The critical majority remains unaware of what the whole world has seen on front pages for the past several weeks and instead lives in a parallel reality where the widely reported bombing of Mariupol's hospital didn't happen, or if it did, they were all Nazis and crisis actors. It's Alex Jones and InfoWars adopted as state religion. Insane.
- freeopinion 5y agoThe U.S. has a nominally free press. There is a wide spectrum. But you will find a significant population that believes Jan 6 was fake. And you will find some who believe it was jovial tailgaters responding to a personal invitation from the President. People often believe what they want to believe. Repression of the press is not helpful. But it isn't hard to find the truth in Russia. You can find whatever truth you want to find.
- foverzar 5y agoYeah, most of this is untrue, you're read too much CNN