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I watch the Russian TV too. They could have shown say an Ukrainian tank destroyed while hiding in the children sandbox or something like this. Yet, no, they can't show anything meaningful despite also having video cameras and supposedly controlling the airspace. I already shown an example of the crap they show https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30669531 - their celebrated high precision missiles being just dumb unguided bombs of the WWII period, and they lie right into your face about it.

I can't see anything in your linked videos. In any case, dumb unguided bombs are not the same as deliberately targeting civilians.

I also don't won't to take sides here, I merely point out that the information is rather one-sided.

I personally also can not verify for example of that children's hospital had military stuff going on or not.

We're mainly seeing civilian reports on social media, not government reports. Oryx only posts multiple visual confirmed losses on either side.

My impression is that we also get daily reports by Zelenskyy himself.

Sure they're available, but you don't have to watch them. I only see his daily extremely cool quote about needing more ammo and such.

The Ukrainian MoD does release estimates of Russian losses, and they're probably fluffed 2-3x but not more than that. I think part of their strategy of appearing like a modern Western country involves actually seeming truthful unlike Russia/China.

As Putin has lied to the world about essentially everything regarding Ukraine, I tend to not believe anything Putin or Russian officials tell us about the war.

I wouldn't believe anything during war times.

A key objective of Russian propaganda is to instill the notion that "nothing can be trusted". It has the same effect as telling people that "all candidates are the same": convince people to sit on the fence while you strengthen your side.

It is a well known disinformation technique. Also used by terrorists to sow mistrust. Completely transparent in the current context.

A couple of days ago there was a job search for US PsyOps posted here on HN. What makes you think it is a specifically Russian strategy?

It also could be a general feature of war or people quarrelling that both parties have different versions of events. They could even both be right in a sense, even if from afar their positions seem to contradict each other.

Kurosawa's movie Rashomon comes to mind.

The Russian version of events is very easy to access, and widely reported on in the west.

Social Meia and search engines are downranking or censoring it, though. All I see (without TV) is general statements like Putin saying "war is going great".

> The Russian version of events is very easy to access

While technically true, it is evident that people in the west have some mental barriers on visiting RUnet.

> widely reported on in the west

That doesn't seem to be the case. Quite a lot gets omitted or even blatantly misrepresented. People even have trouble verifying sources, because they are afraid of "Russian propaganda", despite the fact that their news medium has just referenced this particular piece of "propaganda".

Unfortunately there is a tremendous amount of propaganda being peddled by all actors involved in this war. This is just objective reality and the nature of war, though partisans on one side or the other want to pretend that everything "their side" states are facts while everything the "other side" states are lies. Amazingly, some of this propaganda is being openly pushed despite being debunked, by people who admit that it is false propaganda! The rationale offered is that fake stories are okay if they "increase morale" (by those who seemingly lack the capacity to understand the concept of credibility or its importance).

Among unbiased observers with a grasp of the situation it is clear that Russia could be doing much more damage to Ukrainian cities, and we can only speculate as to why that is. They could be trying to save munitions, they could be doing it for public relations purposes, they could be doing it because they want relatively intact cities if they eventually succeed in taking over Ukraine, or any number of other reasons.

The one thing you can be sure about, is that anyone who claims to know with certainty what is happening in the war zone, or what the "true" motivation of Russia is at the current time, can be safely disregarded as someone who is either confused or pushing an agenda.

>Unfortunately there is a tremendous amount of propaganda being peddled by all actors involved in this war.

There aren't "actors" nor "both sides" in that war. There is Russian Fascist regime which is conducting genocidal war in Ukraine to erase Ukrainian ethnic and national identity. And there is Ukrainian people fighting for their survival. The propaganda comes only from Russia, as compare to Russian propaganda (say publishing 10-20x smaller Russian losses than they really are among other obvious lies) the inconsistencies in Ukrainian information (say publishing 1.5x larger Russian losses than they really are) are just that - inconsistencies natural for a country being invaded and bombed by overwhelming military force.

>This is just objective reality and the nature of war

That is your reality. The reality of Russian propaganda. "We lie and they must be lying too". A reality of the people who couldn't understand how normal civilized people think and behave.

>Among unbiased observers with a grasp of the situation it is clear that Russia could be doing much more damage to Ukrainian cities

nice. I see that new propaganda spin getting peddled by several pro-Russian "propagandons" like you. Whole world - "You, Russians, are committing grievous war crimes by the indiscriminate bombing of civilians". And the new Russian response - "Russia could be doing much more damage to Ukrainian cities. Be grateful that it isn't", and that is a lie too as Russia seems to be running at the maximum of the available hardware.

A “genocidal” war with about 600 civilian casualties according to the UN.

Stringing together lists of bad words like fascism, genocide is not an argument. Neither is calling people propagandists. If this is the level of discussion you want r/worldnews is the place to be nowadays.

The UN estimate is several times lower than everybody else's (except of course Russian) like for example US's . Plus ~1200 Ukrainian military and volunteers which were killed for the same genocidal goal - erasing Ukraine nation. Millions displaced. Genocide isn't about numbers anyway, at least not about numbers in the less than 3 weeks. Russia kills about 150 Ukrainians per day. German Nazi were killing about 3000 Jews/day (6M in 6 years of WWII). So, how many more Ukrainians needs to be killed to satisfy your definition of genocide? Though i'd suggest you read this before commenting - https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml .

Current Russian regime is fascist according to the definition, and this is how it called everyday in Ukraine and Baltic countries.

>Neither is calling people propagandists.

Low moral peddling of pure Russian propaganda makes a person not just propagandist, it makes that person a "propagandon" - used in Russian combination of "propagandist" and an offensive for "condom". The guy has no shame with his "we could be bombing civilians more". The people like him is the base of Russian public support of that genocide, and thus they are actually willing participants in it. There is no "level of discussion" here. They are killing people right now. If anything HN should probably like the rest of the world block Russia.

>If this is the level of discussion you want r/worldnews is the place to be nowadays.

try it yourself as your post contains mostly empty incorrect charges without any factual/references/etc support.

What exactly is your interest in this war? The way you appeal to emotion and make everything personal, stigmatize others is just as damaging to discourse as so-called Russian trolls.

This is a place for having genuine discussions. If you don’t want that… the rest of the internet is currently a Russian bash-fest. So you’re welcome to partake, but remember that those that splash around in mud get dirty.

600 civilians and 1200 soldiers killed doesn’t satisfy anybody’s definition of genocide. Especially since the average HN user doesn’t know under which conditions those deaths happened. This might yet turn into a genocide, but that seems unlikely.

Finally, Russia is an authoritarian state. It is not totalitarian, although it could become so as a consequence of this war.

>make everything personal, stigmatize others is just as damaging to discourse as so-called Russian trolls.

you'd be right if it were a typical "culture war". Unfortunately a "culture war" stops being just a "culture" one and the discussion doesn't exist anymore when one side starts to actually kill people based on their ideological viewpoint they had expressed in the "culture war". Since the moment killing starts advancing the supporting viewpoint is materially supporting the killing.

>600 civilians and 1200 soldiers killed doesn’t satisfy anybody’s definition of genocide.

Only in Mariupol 2200 people have already been killed.

Anyway, I already shown that the situation satisfies UN definition of genocide https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30678544 . As well as other people shown it too, for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30645290 .

As you insist on your personal number based definition - i'll repeat the request, just for argument sake, for you to please state the numbers required according to your definition.

> 600 civilian casualties according to the UN

No. Those are just confirmed. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights says:

> OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, especially in Government-controlled territory and especially in recent days, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration. This concerns, for example, Izium (Kharkiv region), and Mariupol and Volnovakha (Donetsk region) where there are allegations of hundreds of civilian casualties. These figures are being further corroborated and are not included in the above statistics.

https://reliefweb.int/report/ukraine/ukraine-civilian-casual...

This doesn’t change anything about the exaggerated claim that this is a genocidal war. Where’s the proof?

All signs so far indicate that it’s a war of conquest with the aim on putting space between Russia and NATO and potentially controlling additional natural resources.

>This doesn’t change anything about the exaggerated claim that this is a genocidal war. Where’s the proof?

You seem to have failed to check the genocide definition https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml . Let me copy it here :

" Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; "

Putin explicitly announced that the main goal of that war is his final solution to "Ukrainian question" - anybody not displaced is either to be converted/subjugated by stripping off their ethical and national identity or to be killed for resistance. That is exactly by the book of the Hitler's solution for Slavic people on USSR territories back then.

>I see that new propaganda spin getting peddled by several pro-Russian "propagandons" like you.

Flinging accusation of being "pro-Russian" at people who acknowledge the fog of war and the indisputable fact that there is propaganda coming out from all sides of this war doesn't bolster your position.

>The propaganda comes only from Russia

The Ghost of Kiev begs to differ.

>Flinging accusation of being "pro-Russian" at people who acknowledge the fog of war and the indisputable fact that there is propaganda coming out from all sides of this war doesn't bolster your position.

It is you who are creating additional fog of war by raising unfounded doubts about reasonable sources of information and by attempting thus to decrease the doubt about the sources of total disinformation like the official Russian propaganda. It isn't an academical debate. That fog of war is one of the tools employed by Russia in their genocidal war in Ukraine and by building it up you're directly participating in it.

>The Ghost of Kiev begs to differ.

That is all you could come up with ?! Looks to me like a profound lack of compassion and lack of basic humanity on your side. Somehow you're able to suggest that it is 2 comparable things:

- outright denying of, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and thus providing material support for, committing of the war crimes of the massive bombing of cities

- people being bombed in their city inventing a legend that it is the same plane with the same pilot who saves them again and again by shooting down the bombing planes.

Sorry but that is extremist nonsense. Are you even aware that the war has already been going on since 2014, with 40000 casualties (afaik)?

The Donbass war was a typical separatist war which i supported (in particular i supported Russian military help as a way to equalize the military chances and thus force the peaceful solution by making military solution unachievable for either side) as i in general usually support separatists. Conducting that war, Ukraine for example has never attacked Russian territory, say Moscow or St.Petersburg, as it would be pure war crime unrelated to war. You seem to be suggesting that current attacks on Chernigov, Harkiv, Kiev, etc. are part of that war. I fail to see connection here.

On Feb 24 Putin started a new war, not related to the Donbass war. The main goal of the new war was explicitly proclaimed by Putin as "Ukraine doesn't exist. Ukrainians don't exist. Anybody resisting to that is to be killed."

I don't know why that war is being fought, but for example the scenario "if Ukraine joins Nato, then further fighting in the Donbass or the Crimea would lead to war with Nato, so those territories would be lost" seems at least possible. And if Russians were murdered in the Donbass, even "we want to defend Russians in the Ukraine" could be a possible motive.

The theory of "genozide on Ukrainians" sounds very implausible to me, given that there are several possible real motives for the war.

Mind you, I am not saying it is justified, I don't know enough about it. Personally I would guess more is going on than just "Ukraine becoming Democratic is a threat" or "Putin has become crazy".