I’m afraid this subthread is an example of HNers being too clever by half. Sometimes the simple narrative that you find in major media outlets is the truth. It’s honestly quite interesting to see the mental gymnastics that people have to engage in to somehow convince themselves that this war is going well for Russia - and not because they support Russia, but merely because they hate the idea of agreeing with the New York Times.
There have been several major, heavily hyped stories about the war so far that just weeks later were admitted to be deliberate lies to booster Ukrainian morale. The Ghost of Kiev and his many kills: never existed. The "fuck you Russian battleship" guy who turned out to be captured, not heroically self sacrificed. Etc. These events weren't mere exaggerations, they were entirely made up.
Given this it's pretty reasonable for rational people to assume we have no idea how the war is going. After all, for every made up Russian kill that gets detected there must be many more that don't. And the same in the opposite direction with Russian state media of course.
They were also completely inconsequential stories as far as the overall progress of the war is concerned. You're cherry picking some incomplete or inaccurate stories then using these as a (poor) justification for disbelieving well-confirmed facts about Russian losses.
A sunk battleship is a sunk battleship, no doubt about that. And I certainly haven't heard any reports claiming the Russian attack is going well.
But the first time I heard a "top general" had been killed, my mind naturally went to generals I've heard of - the MacArthurs and Zhukovs of this world. If instead it was a one-star general and the Russians have 200 other generals just as capable, the loss might be far less consequential.
There are also a lot of figures floating around that are ripe for causing such confusion. Javelin missiles have a 90-95% kill rate; Ukraine has received 17,000 antitank missiles and says they need 500 per day; any yet, only 400 russian tanks have been destroyed in total?
One can still hope and wish for a free Ukraine while doing it with our eyes open. You can read the news while being aware of the bias in the media.
In future, just don't ask the question if you don't want to hear the truth. The only mental gymnastics going on is you reading far too much into people attempting to answer your question.
What I'd really like to know is what people who believe that the Russian military has acted competently believe about the situation on the ground. Do they think, for example, that Russia is actually in control of large areas of Ukraine and is making significant advances? Do they think that Zelenski is close to capitulating? Or do they somehow believe that the Russian armed forces have failed to achieve all of their strategic goals and yet not actually been incompetent?
Hell, just looking at Putin's facial expressions tells you as much, and that's just one tiny piece of information.
A little bit of selection bias doesn't mean that the signal disappears.
For example, is it 100 soldiers refusing to fight, or 100,000? The former is noise, the latter is an actual problem.
Remember the flag burning photos they used to regularly show in the middle East?
It always looked like a huge crowd, but I remember seeing the regular photos and eventually realizing it was often a tiny crowd of people.
It might only be 20 extremists that the camera was tightly focused on. They often had the camera zoomed in and low to the ground and slightly pointed up so you couldn't clearly see how empty the area was.
And that was a natural consequence of the photographer/TV crew wanting to make money.
They wanted to make it look really packed/busy because it sells more pictures/attracts more viewers.