> So now you buy into Russian propaganda instead of political science. Interesting. There is a difference between believing propaganda and drawing conclusions

> So now you buy into Russian propaganda instead of political science. Interesting. There is a difference between believing propaganda and drawing conclusions from the fact that the propaganda exists. As an example, imagine that there is a guy called Hitler, who writes a book saying "Jews are trying to destroy the world, but I am going to save the world by destroying them". If you read the book and conclude "this Hitler guy is going to save the world", you are believing the propaganda. If you read the book and conclude "this Hitler guy seems to hate Jews", you are drawing a conclusion. In both cases you have read the book and came to a conclusion, but the process was quite different. Similarly, if a guy called Putin writes a book saying "Ukrainians are not a real nation, they are actually a part of my nation and it's a shame that they have a separate country", then if you conclude "the Ukrainians are not a real nation", you are believing the propaganda, but if you conclude "this Putin guy will probably try to annex Ukraine", you are drawing a conclusion. Anyway, it's not just the book, it's also the fact that Russian tanks were already approaching Kiev (before they ran out of gas, and were destroyed or stolen by tractors), the news articles celebrating the capture of Kiev that were written in advance and accidentally published, etc. A large part of reality would need to be different to make "actually, Putin never wanted to conquer Ukraine" a plausible hypothesis.