Russia is 100% violating international law but is not the only country doing so right now by a longshot.

The US is also pressing a tremendous propaganda effort that seems to ignore domestic issues, other international issues and fully whitewash our own slow-roll of Ukraine's attempts to join the EU (1, 2) or NATO 1. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/zelenskyy... 2. https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/02/27/eu-and-ukraine-taki...

"further EU approximation will not be achieved so easily. There is frustration in Kiev that a deeper relationship with the EU has not brought a membership perspective or the kind of large-scale financial assistance that new member states have received." (2018)

And the cost of gas continues to go up while crude goes down (3) and we are doing what would have been unthinkable in 2019, pushing more domestic drilling. (4)

3. https://www.marketplace.org/2022/03/18/why-arent-gas-prices-... 4. https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/new-da...

It truly feels like another set of years in the upside down.

Imho news is like a mix of slot machine (aka Skinner Box) and a 'Confirmation Bias Machine'. Our brain is wired to prefer new things. Especially if we have the delusion this new thing (or information) might benefit us in some way.

What I found enlightening was the late Hans Rosling's idea (in his book Factfulness) that one roughly consumes (on average) about 10.000 news pieces a year (about 30 per day). And that one should ask oneself how many of them trigger or at least influence a relevant decision one makes/has to make.

How much of news is noise vs. signal?

To me this combination of low signal-to-noise ratio and addictive quality of media/news consumption while fostering my confirmation bias was enough to change jobs and turn my back to news.

Given the additional fact of massive propaganda in war times (or any crisis) would only be the icing on the proverbial cake.

First link i could find, from 2021. Clearly the same suits /s.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-564...

https://web.archive.org/web/20141124185343/https://www.rt.co...

Unless the russians hacked the archive or time traveled, it shows that the yellow suit has been used since at least 2014.

They were different teams of russians. Each team gets to choose their own colors.

The one in 2014 ( "Oleg Artemyev" ) and the one in 2022 ( "Oleg Artemyev" ) are the same person/team? Maybe yellow is mr artemyev's favorite color. But whatever.

The Ukrainian flag is yellow and light blue, not yellow and navy blue. I don't know why everyone's saying it's the same colors.

> yet news outlet have _zero_ doubt this is a political message from the cosmonauts.

Citation please. I’ve seen a couple of articles about it, neither offered a conclusion.

"It was unclear what, if any, message the yellow uniforms they changed into were intended to send." -- The Guardian

"It's not yet clear what message the cosmonauts were trying to send. But when asked about the yellow suits, Artemyev said that every crew chooses their own." -- NPR

I'm not sure this qualifies as "_zero_ doubt". Every news outlet I've seen indicates that the Russians said it was because of excess fabric, etc. And every headline has indicated they arrived in yellow and blue jumpsuits, which, of course, they did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics)

>> In politics, a dog whistle is the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition. The concept is named for ultrasonic dog whistles used in shepherding, which are audible to dogs but not humans. Dog whistles use language that appears normal to the majority but communicates specific things to intended audiences. They are generally used to convey messages on issues likely to provoke controversy without attracting negative attention. One example may be the use of the phrase family values in the United States to signal to Christians that a candidate would support policies promoting Christian values without alienating non-Christian supporters.[1] Another may be the use of the phrase "international bankers" to signal to racists that a candidate is antisemitic without alienating non-racist supporters.[2]

However, since this story is a different topic, it "is" not an example of dog whistling.

We are swimming in a sea of patterns at all times, but unfortunately we often cannot see the ones that are there - but luckily(?), this is compensated for by often seeing ones that are not there!

"Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?"

- Frank Herbert

> ...they were wearing flight suits of striking colors — yellow and blue, similar to the colors of Ukraine’s flag.

> The Russian astronauts did not say anything that would suggest that their clothing was a political statement. Yet it seemed difficult to believe it was happenstance. The outfits worn by astronauts in orbit on a daily basis tend to be subdued...

Edit: the parent commenter originally said "Citation please." without any elaboration.

> The Russian astronauts did not say anything that would suggest that their clothing was a political statement. Yet it seemed difficult to believe it was happenstance. The outfits worn by astronauts in orbit on a daily basis tend to be subdued. But recent crews from Russia have worn vibrant flight suits of various colors during their arrival, including Yulia Peresild, an actress who arrived on the station in November in a bold red coverall.

> Eric Berger, a space reporter at the website Ars Technica, said the flight suits are usually prepared and packed months in advance but that substitutes could have been added among the last items to be loaded on the spacecraft.

> Eric Berger

> @SciGuySpace

> I still haven't found anyone who really knows why the Russian cosmonauts wore yellow flight suits (with Ukraine blue highlights) to board the ISS. However, this is a revealing answer from the mission commander. Just wild if they smuggled these suits on board.

> Katya Pavlushchenko

> @katlinegrey

> Replying to @Ian_Benecken

> They. We’re asked about the color of the suits, and Oleg answered, there was too much yellow fabric accumulated in the warehouse Except that, just usual greetings and best wishes.

> Jonathan McDowell, a scientist at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics who closely follows space missions, suggested the colors might actually be those of Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which all three of the astronauts — Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov — attended. An official from the university spoke as a guest on the Russian livestream of the launch on Friday.

> Jonathan McDowell

> @planet4589

> It is actually plausible that the 'Ukrainian' color flight suits are in fact "Bauman University" color suits. They made a big deal of this being the first all-Bauman crew. (BMGTU is sort of Moscow's MIT AeroAstro and many Russian astronauts are graduates)

> Ламинат09

> @laminate09

> Replying to @katlinegrey

> Colors are just homage to Baumann MGTU likely

You seem completely out of touch on how propaganda works. Nobody reads the headline anymore, and news websites know it better than anything else. If the headline presents the news from a particular slant and then questions that slant in the 6th paragraph that 99.9999% of people coming across the article never read, that doesn't make the article not misinformation.

Read the threads on reddit on the topic. 100k+ upvotes, thousands of comments all showing that this sort of propaganda works beautifully.

And speaking about supporting UA with colors same happened with Chinese CCTV news anchor where someone completely changed colors of her dress from green to blue and then spread this changed image for Ukrainian propaganda purposes all over social media, you can see social media photo and real colors in video here:

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4458635

However, thinking critically, what are the odds that these colors just happen to perfectly align with the Ukrainian flag? Also, I've never see any space suite, from any country, in a yellow color. I've at least attempted to find evidence that they've used yellow suits before, but haven't found any. At this point I feel like I'm trying to prove a negative, and would ask anyone who claims that these yellow suits have been used before to please provide evidence.

On the other hand, I doubt those space suits were made in the last 2 weeks.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-ridicules-idea-t...

Reading the above article on the subject I notice a few interesting things. First, the suits were allegedly made some moths ago in the colors of the crews alma mater. They all have the same alma mater? Seems strange.

Second, the article says: "Every crew picks a color that looks different. It was our turn to pick a color," said the cosmonaut. "The truth is, we had accumulated a lot of yellow fabric, so we needed to use it up. That's why we had to wear yellow flight suits." -- They got to pick their colors, and picked yellow because they had extra fabric and HAD to choose yellow? This seems self contradictory. It also doesn't mention alma mater. There's 3 different explanations put forth by the article.

To top it all off, I haven't seen anything about these suits having existed since 2015 like you claim.

I'm not convinced the suits of a space agency were really determined by the amount of excess fabric they had lying around.

> Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev said each crew picks the color of the flight suits about six months before launch because they need to be individually sewn. And since all three of them were graduates of Bauman Moscow State Technical University, they chose the colors of their prestigious alma mater.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-europe-mo...

The action here was not by choosing Ukrainian flag suits. Like in USSR back then and today in Russia it works in a quantum mechanics way, ie. the suits were already there and those cosmonauts and others involved around instead of paying political correct attention and blocking/replacing those suits - as everybody obviously understood the reaction these suits would produce - they just played dummy and used these suits "Oh! these are just what we've always been using."