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> For instance when we keep reading "the Russian bombing hospitals, theaters and schools" it's evidently propaganda Or it's just a fact... I guess some people

by megous 5y ago

> For instance when we keep reading "the Russian bombing hospitals, theaters and schools" it's evidently propaganda Or it's just a fact... I guess some people may think Ukrainian's are blowing up those palces themselves, or making it up. But this is not really the first time in history of indiscriminate bombings have been happening to terrorize the population of some place into submission/demoralization out of spite. (And I guess it will not be the first time, where it may strenghten such population's resolve, looking at you London...) > but normally no one army in the world waste ammo for nothing You seem to just explain away the fact that these places are being bombed/shelled with some reasoning amounting to "makes no sense to me, therefore it must be propaganda", without knowing about current leadership's real decision making, or taking into account results of any fact finding missions, like OSCE's. All I can agree on is that we don't know for sure if it's a policy. But it sure looked like it was a policy in Syria, in addition to an apparent campaign to demonize the civil service and health care workers, so it's not really out of question. Especially not because of some flimsy reasoning about "I don't know who would benefit". Qucks like a duck, looks like a duck, etc.

alienicecream 5y ago
Ukrainian forces have been shelling civilian areas in the Donbass since 2014. How much of a stretch is it to believe they would use them as human shields as well? We don't know for sure what is happening on the ground but speculation can go both ways.
- megous 5y ago
  Well, I dislike reasoning about this without facts, so maybe you can add some statistics from monitoring missions, like how many shells hit civilian areas each year since 2014. How many civilian victims there were each year, etc. I guess to understand the scale of the issue... to see if it's more like an active terror campaign with a city/village being shelled every single day (like the joint Russian/Assad terror campaigns in the northwest of Syria), or more like something else. If it looks more like a former, then yes, I'll accept that UA gov doesn't care about civilians there.
kkfx 5y ago
In public docs terms from western public bodies: https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/e/7/233896.pdf https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/e/7/233896.pdf but beside that the "fact" someone describe cannot be really proven. I mean few weeks ago Italian main TV channel have passed "the bombing of Kiev" witch was recognized quickly as a cut-scene of the game War Thunder. Then various westerns media have publish a news about a correspondent killed on duty, the same one declared killed an year or so in Kabul. Other medias show pictures of crying women saying they are Ukrainian in tears for the Russian bombing, actually those photos came from AFP/2014 and were really Ukrainian women in tears, only they were Russian-speaking ones in tear for Euromaidan massacres. Since I'm not there, not I know in person anyone there I can't say who bombed who nor if there war really such bombing at all. While I can reason at the macro level, because at micro level anyone can say no matter what it's next to impossible prove that true or false if not done so badly like actual propaganda, but at larger scale is equally next to impossible hiding things and reasoning about their real reasons is far easier. Of course the fact that me, myself and I fails to see a sense in something does not disprove that something, but connecting dots help and the actual propaganda, on both sides, reached a level that's very easy to spot it.
- megous 5y ago
  You can't reason on the macro level either, because you know neither the real decision making of high level persons in control, nor sufficient scope of individual facts (as you say). How can you reason on macro level if your input is either news you don't trust, or hearsay you can't verify? As to the document you posted... That document is not from OSCE. OSCE just added a header to it. It's entirey written by https://democracyfund.ru/ https://democracyfund.ru/ . So it can hardly be described as created by a "western body". Also OSCE is not a purely western body anyway. It includes Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and many other eastern european countries. Most importantly, it's not a report from an official fact finding mission (which is a specialist endeavor to send observers to a location to gather facts regardless of the meaning of such facts, like movements and activities of armed forces, shots being fired, destroyed property, documenting casualties, etc.) with summary statistics, etc. The document you posted is composed of random interviews with released prisoners from UA prisons. I guess it has some value, torture by UA security apparatus may have been happening as described, but it's not relevant to what I asked for in my reply to you. (which was to take into account results from actual fact finding missions, which is about documented facts, not about interviews or hearsay) And yes, news outlets are about clicks and speed and some about shock value, as we know. I agree with you that they sometimes report complete crap. Everyone needs to take individual news reports with a grain of salt. Game footage was reported as actual war footage by a Russian embassy on twitter during Syria war. There's stupidity on both sides, you know. ;)

by megous 5y ago

alienicecream 5y ago

Ukrainian forces have been shelling civilian areas in the Donbass since 2014. How much of a stretch is it to believe they would use them as human shields as well? We don't know for sure what is happening on the ground but speculation can go both ways.

megous 5y ago
Well, I dislike reasoning about this without facts, so maybe you can add some statistics from monitoring missions, like how many shells hit civilian areas each year since 2014. How many civilian victims there were each year, etc. I guess to understand the scale of the issue... to see if it's more like an active terror campaign with a city/village being shelled every single day (like the joint Russian/Assad terror campaigns in the northwest of Syria), or more like something else. If it looks more like a former, then yes, I'll accept that UA gov doesn't care about civilians there.

kkfx 5y ago

In public docs terms from western public bodies: https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/e/7/233896.pdf https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/e/7/233896.pdf but beside that the "fact" someone describe cannot be really proven. I mean few weeks ago Italian main TV channel have passed "the bombing of Kiev" witch was recognized quickly as a cut-scene of the game War Thunder. Then various westerns media have publish a news about a correspondent killed on duty, the same one declared killed an year or so in Kabul. Other medias show pictures of crying women saying they are Ukrainian in tears for the Russian bombing, actually those photos came from AFP/2014 and were really Ukrainian women in tears, only they were Russian-speaking ones in tear for Euromaidan massacres. Since I'm not there, not I know in person anyone there I can't say who bombed who nor if there war really such bombing at all. While I can reason at the macro level, because at micro level anyone can say no matter what it's next to impossible prove that true or false if not done so badly like actual propaganda, but at larger scale is equally next to impossible hiding things and reasoning about their real reasons is far easier. Of course the fact that me, myself and I fails to see a sense in something does not disprove that something, but connecting dots help and the actual propaganda, on both sides, reached a level that's very easy to spot it.

megous 5y ago
You can't reason on the macro level either, because you know neither the real decision making of high level persons in control, nor sufficient scope of individual facts (as you say). How can you reason on macro level if your input is either news you don't trust, or hearsay you can't verify? As to the document you posted... That document is not from OSCE. OSCE just added a header to it. It's entirey written by https://democracyfund.ru/ https://democracyfund.ru/ . So it can hardly be described as created by a "western body". Also OSCE is not a purely western body anyway. It includes Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and many other eastern european countries. Most importantly, it's not a report from an official fact finding mission (which is a specialist endeavor to send observers to a location to gather facts regardless of the meaning of such facts, like movements and activities of armed forces, shots being fired, destroyed property, documenting casualties, etc.) with summary statistics, etc. The document you posted is composed of random interviews with released prisoners from UA prisons. I guess it has some value, torture by UA security apparatus may have been happening as described, but it's not relevant to what I asked for in my reply to you. (which was to take into account results from actual fact finding missions, which is about documented facts, not about interviews or hearsay) And yes, news outlets are about clicks and speed and some about shock value, as we know. I agree with you that they sometimes report complete crap. Everyone needs to take individual news reports with a grain of salt. Game footage was reported as actual war footage by a Russian embassy on twitter during Syria war. There's stupidity on both sides, you know. ;)