I think the propaganda aspect is not so much about the performance of the Russian military (on any objective measure, it's been very bad), but rather on the cla

I think the propaganda aspect is not so much about the performance of the Russian military (on any objective measure, it's been very bad), but rather on the claims that the Russian military is unusually brutal and indiscriminate, and the complete amnesia when it comes to similarly brutal, indiscriminate practices by other militaries. For example, the reason why Mariupol is such a wreck is because that is what a city looks like, after weeks of urban warfare. That's what Falujah looked like. That's what Mosul looked like. It's not that the Russians are evil bogeymen - it's simply that if you're trying to take a city, you either have to wreak havoc on that city, or you have to take unsustainable casualties. When you see images of people with their hands tied dead in a basement somewhere, that's what counterinsurgency looks like. When you see kids missing arms, that's what aerial bombardment looks like. When you see hospitals get bombed, civilian cars getting riddled with bullets, this is all what war looks like. The propaganda aspect is simply that when those cars were Iraqi cars, those people with their hands tied were Afghanis, or those kids were from Syria, we never saw those pictures. So now, every talking head goes on about how brutal the Russians are being, as if it was in the nature of the Russian military, rather than simply in the nature of war itself.