Russian propaganda right now (also notice how Kyiv is on lower case intentionally):

Why the “Buchan Massacre” is fake

Ukraine is spreading a new “crime against humanity”. Entering the cities of the kyiv region, which the Russian troops abandoned as part of the regroupment, the nationalists of the terbats suddenly found the streets littered with the corpses of civilians. Traces of torture, tied hands, scarlet blood: images of the city of Bucha shake the soul.

Ukrainian propaganda paints a terrible picture of the “Russian occupation”, under which real sadists intimidated the locals. Here it is, Ukrainian Srebrenica. By analogy with the “massacre” of Bosnian Muslims in Yugoslavia, of which the Serbs were accused. Although his version, which was significantly inferior in scale to the official one, no one took it into account.

I will now explain why Srebrenica in Bucha is a lie.

...

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I did not put link intentionally.

> I will now explain why Srebrenica in Bucha is a lie.

This is the core of tribalism. You don't need to prove or disprove, you just need to rouse

>By analogy with the “massacre” of Bosnian Muslims in Yugoslavia

"Massacre" in quotes reminds that Russia officially denies that what happened in Srebrenica was genocide.

They don't try that hard to hide it. Russia had an open internet until this month and still foreigners can participate in unblocked social networks (unlike China where not only everything has been blocked for over a decade but they make it very difficult for foreigners to participate or even read discussions). Russian propaganda works by assaulting credibility in general. Just imagine if every network and authority in the country is constantly calling everything "fake news" then basically people decide nothing anyone says is that believable, and they are free to believe whatever they want or what makes them feel right.

You underestimate the power of propaganda. I guess you can find some Russia Today videos or maybe some translated recordings from the Russia's state TV and check for yourself. They are very good at this. Some of the otherwise kind and humane people I know believe in this BS (yes, they really believe that Russia is fighting Nazis and liberating people). Arguing with them is useless (I told they are otherwise kind and humane, I did not say anything about them being smart). And I don't see reasons for this to change anytime soon.

Consider how well it works on you. Do you do any research when you read news (especially such terrifying news)? Most people do not - they have some opinion and then reinforce it. This is war and all parties lie, and there are questions to be asked (if you, for some silly reason, want to get closer to the "truth").

Many (if not most) Azov members are Russian-speaking ethnic Russians. And vice versa, many of those fighting Azov are ethnic Ukrainians. The question is not the language or ethnicity but where one supports the Euromaidan or not. And Russia's biggest mistakes were recognizing that Western puppet regime, trying to negotiate with them (Minsk) and going the Nord Stream 2 way. And it's not clear why Putin went this way and tried to leave Donbass and Luhansk with Ukraine even though the population demanded the opposite. Maybe he believed Medvedchuk but more likely we just don't see the whole picture.

Also war still has not been declared officially and the Russian side is still fulfilling the obligation to Kolomoyski, that is the pipelines are still pumping gas and oil. And why Russia destroyed storage tanks at Kolomoyski's oil refinery only a few days ago? Has it something to do with Kolomoyski's friend Abramovich taking part in the negotiations recently? Obviously, we don't see the full picture here and unlikely will.

Regarding to what happened in Bucha we still have no names of the victims, not to mention a forensic report which is infinitely harder to fake than a news video. On the other hand we see videos where Ukrainian troops torturing their Russian army prisoners (shooting legs, cutting throats) and numerous reports from civilians in Mariupol of Azov shooting them while they were trying to leave the city and using them as a human shield, occupying higher floors in residential buildings and placing their firing points there etc.

One factor might be the exodus of people with internationally facing jobs, those with contact on the outside. By some accounts this is getting into hundreds of thousands of workers and their families.

Their media isn't telling them that, though, and that's extremely powerful.

Like, the US has a largely free (if not particularly competitive) media landscape, and ~30% of Americans believe that Trump won the election; this is _highly_ correlated with what media they consume. It's obvious nonsense, and ~nobody _outside_ the US believes that, but if the only media you consume tells you that all other media in the world is fake news... If it's like that in a country with independent media, imagine how much worse it'll be in a country with no significant independent media.

I'm from the outside the US and i tell you that those elections had an extreme bias by social networks favouring biden and suppressing trump. Also, election results are far from being obvious nonsense. Watching rigged elections all my adult life, a lot of telling signs of a fraud were there, and methods of suppression of dissent about them were eerily similar to how it's being done in Russia.

One simple thing: only a very misguided person would claim that voter id laws are an "assault on democracy". Oh, it makes harder to vote? Good! Voting is a right, if a voter isn't willing to lift a finger to exercise this right, then it's fair that his opinion doesn't count.