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Comment by ibero | Hacker News Reader

> this is a war with no heroes

pretty sure i seen some heroes.

How sure are you that at least some of that wasn't manufactured propaganda? You do realize that propaganda works for both sides and it can be hard to identify in the fog of war. All I am saying is that it pays to be skeptical in these troubling times.

i saw a man running into a crumbling building that was mortared to hell to get their neighbors children out.

That is fantastic and that man is most certainly a hero, no argument.

That said, my question was about how certain you were that at least some of the heroic acts you read or watched, were not some form of propaganda? Call me cynical but as soon as the conflict started I started investigating claims from both sides and I learned that a significant amount of what we heard early in this invasion turned out to be false propaganda.

Examples:

- Figher Ghost Ace turns out to be a myth https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/03/02/ukraines-figh...

- Israel TV Channel shows Star Wars Tie Fighter crash landed in Ukraine https://www.nytimespost.com/israeli-tv-channel-runs-live-foo...

- According to Reuters/MSNBC/US Officials - There is no evidence Russia attacked nuclear reactors in Ukraine. https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-usa-nuclear-e...

You won't find 100% correctness even in peace time. That doesn't mean you can throw your hands in the air and assume that information from both sides of the conflict is on average equally (un)trustworthy.

There's tons of evidence to show the horrors of what Russia is doing in Ukraine, and stuff like the ghost of Kyiv is just a morale boost for Ukrainians and is utterly irrelevant.

So yes, you should of course be sceptical, but no amount of honest and fair scepticism will paint Russia's invasion in a significantly better light.

I don't expect you to watch this full video but will leave it here for anyone who is curious about the broader context for this conflict.

TL;DR: The war didn't start last week. It has been ongoing since 2014 and involves horrible acts from both sides.

No, they don't average out and unfortunately we may never know what the 'truth' is here.

I won't pretend to have all the answers, but I will say after watching the video, the situation appears to be much more complicated than it is being depicted on western media.

Curiosity Stream: Why Russia is invading Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE

That is a decent factual YouTube video but it is laser focused on the title - what does Russia get out of invading Ukraine. There is no discussion at all of atrocities or moral controversies... Does the advertised curiosity stream series go into more details on that?

> Does the advertised curiosity stream series go into more details on that?

Not that I can find. They seem to be focused on military strategy and geopolitics. Their other videos are about the reasons behind other modern military conflicts.

I mean then we can't really use that video to judge or corroborate the morality / atrocities of the sides. And even for economics and politics, there is no analysis of balance or tradeoffs, just an exposition of what Russia wants. The video is still good information for those unaware, but only in the realpolitik sense, not as a source of moral or value judgements about the situation.

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