Hacker News Reader

Comment by achikin | Hacker News Reader

Russian media reports them being captured and transferred to Sevastopol https://m-lenta-ru.translate.goog/news/2022/02/26/zmeinuy_ua...

View on HN

I'll admit I have no idea if the story is true, but it is just hilarious to me that in a thread about questioning the stories being reported that you actually tried to point to Russian state-owned media as a source of authoritative truth.

I think it’s hardly reasonable to equate saying “Russian media reports” with claiming it to be source of authoritative truth.

Knowingly posting an untrustworthy source without any remark on its untrustworthiness implies that you believe that source. It is hard to imagine a more untrustworthy source than state-owned media coming from the aggressor nation in a war that basically all neutral parties agree is unjustified.

As I said in my other comment, of course Russian media and gov is untrustworthy, but so is Ukrainian government and media. Both have incentive to push specific narrative: Russians wants to be seen as chivalrous liberators, which requires them to blame civilian casualties on Ukraine as much as possible, while Ukraine wants to be seen as putting up strong resistance in order to keep morale high, and point to civilian deaths as proofs of their invaders savage barbarism.

This means you cannot take any sides claims at face value. At the same time, you shouldn’t just ignore them and close your eyes to propaganda, as you’ll miss important nuggets of truth that are sprinkled throughout the narrative. The more information you get, from all sides, the more likely you will be to be able to piece together what actually is going on.

Hence why the comment above said “Russian media reports”, without five paragraphs of disclaimers that this is not gospel truth, as it assumed that people are able to think for themselves, and take Russian media reports for what they are, which is, while obviously an aggressor’s propaganda, not necessarily a falsehood.

I don't know what you are going on about. I started my first comment with "I'll admit I have no idea if the story is true" so it should have been clear that I was not siding with either Ukrainian or Russian sources on this specific issue.

I also didn't need "five paragraphs of disclaimers". I didn't even need five words of disclaimers. A simple "They're biased but..." at the start of that original comment and I wouldn't have felt the need to respond.

You don't need to overanalyze my comment. I simply think that if someone asks for a source and your only response is a source of questionable accuracy, that you should acknowledge that the source is not authoritative. I found it funny that this was happening in a conversation that was already about how many sources can't be trusted so I commented to point these two things out. It isn't any more complicated than that.

I assumed you need a thorough explanation, considering your statements like “Knowingly posting an untrustworthy source without any remark on its untrustworthiness implies that you believe that source.”. No, this is simply untrue. That’s not how it ever worked. Western media will happily relay Russian claims without adding disclaimers about trustworthiness of Russian media in each and every instance. The main reason to add disclaimers like these is to in fact signal allegiance to opposing side.

RF has multiple billions of dollars in budget to make fakes en masse at professional level.

Ukraine is busy fighting for survival.

It looks like they look equal in your eyes, so RF is very weak and Ukraine is very strong.

No, they don’t “look equal” in my eyes. I was only talking about the incentives of each side, not how successful their efforts are.

That said, since I live in the west, I’m overwhelmingly exposed to pro-Ukraine propaganda, and very little to pro-Russia propaganda. Almost none of it is, of course, paid for by Ukraine.

Russian media has a huge interest in discrediting the story to break morale though. I wanted to check the link saying the Russian DoD has footage of the prisoners, but it just links to a tag list of all their articles about the Russian DoD.

The site you've linked also has an article saying Biden is considering WW3 as a possible alternative to sanctions.

https://m-lenta-ru.translate.goog/news/2022/02/26/3rd/?_x_tr...

If only Russian media was to be believed…

Update from Ukrainian state media:

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3413919-state-border-gu...

The site seems legit despite the .net domain (cross-check with the Wikipedia article, where the URL has not been modified recently). Doubtful it got hacked as the latest articles do not have a pro-Russian angle.

Unless there is video & audio of them being alive, this is most likely just propaganda. And even then, deepfakes are getting pretty good these days.

Nice. And if you believe RUS media, I'd like to talk to you about a bridge I have for sale, or some rare oceanfront property in Kansas ;-)

RUS strategy is to flood the zone with conflicting information so as to create a 'wilderness of mirrors', create infighting in the opposition, and/or get people to give up on finding the truth.

Seriously, a broken analog clock that is correct twice per day is more trustworthy.

> RUS strategy is to flood the zone with conflicting information so as to create a 'wilderness of mirrors', create infighting in the opposition, and/or get people to give up on finding the truth

Indeed, but this is also Ukrainian strategy. It is in Ukrainian interest to push morale-increasing stories. Of course everything Russian media and government say needs to be taken as propaganda, but doing that while taking Ukrainian sides claims as highly accurate, is just wishful thinking.

I never said that one had to take every UKR claim as accurate

But I will say that they are likely to be more accurate - after all, the Russians are the undisputed world champions of dezinformatsiya for at least 15 decades; Ukranians are at best their students.

And as for who is in the right and who is wrong in these events, it is 100% clear - Putin's govt and military are 100% wrong. He is an autocrat attempting to undermine a neighboring democracy, because the very idea of proper democracy at home, Putin sees as a threat to his power. He is happy to kill and gail opponents, from Navalny, to Magnitski, to Litvenienko, and the list goes on...

It is wrong, that is all there is to it. Stop trying to justify it, or play whataboutism games. Have a deep rethink.

HN is a place for civilised discussion, so please do not refer to this site without a huge disclaimer. Read why at [0].

Thank you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenta.ru

To be fair Russian media also says invading Ukraine was justified to save the population from its government ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

according to Western media who again has an interest in portraying Russian media as bad

Russian media and the Russian negotiators said there would be no attack on Ukraine. Why would you still give them the benefit of the doubt after that? If they lied about that then there is absolutely no reason to believe them about anything else as long as Putin is in power.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com