But a closely related story of "ship, go fuck yourself" was propaganda. The way it was told implied that solders died heroically, whereby they were taken pow and later returned to Ukraine.
Propaganda works by selecting some facts and amplifying them, all the while hiding others. Note how Ukrainian military losses are never reported, for example. Photos of destroyed Russian tanks are all over the place, but not a single photo of destroyed Ukrainian equipment. The coverage is very selective to paint a specific picture.
>But a closely related story of "ship, go fuck yourself" was propaganda. The way it was told implied that solders died heroically, whereby they were taken pow and later returned to Ukraine.
That was because after the soldiers said that the feed got cut off and Ukraine didn't hear back from the soldiers until Russia said they were captured. So up until as it was revealed they were captured, the worst was assumed.
>but not a single photo of destroyed Ukrainian equipment
There are many photos like this, did you even bother to look?
Oryx's blog for example has 1,040 photos of destroyed/captured Ukrainian equipment
I’m not denying that Ukrainian propaganda exists. My point is that there is a huge amount of evidence that the war is going badly for Russia and that the Russian military has lacked competence. Oddly, lordnacho seems to suggest that they are less inclined to believe this the more evidence for it that they see.
The mere fact that Ukraine still is not occupied by Russia tells you pretty much everything you need to know.
One doesn't need to read news to know that this war isn't going well. Trying to go against a nation that most Russians perceive as brotherly using an army comprising 16 year old conscripts ain't going to go well. Glaring motivation and morale issues, underpaid officers, rampant negligence, indifference and theft - ask any Russian and you will get an earful of how rotten the army is even during the peace time.
> My point is that there is a huge amount of evidence that the war is going badly for Russia and that the Russian military has lacked competence.
You can just copy-paste that comment for virtually every army out there. Ukraine is holding up because it is massively supplied with modern weapons that they never had in the first place by foreign powers: this is clearly a proxy war, not a bunch of peasants pushing back well-armed Russians.
You can’t copy and paste my comment for ‘every army out there’, as some armies are winning wars and aren’t incompetent. That’s such an odd thing to say that I almost feel you must have intended to write something else.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at with the rest of your comment. Yes, Ukraine has Western aid. That doesn’t negate Russian incompetence or mean that Russia is somehow actually winning. For example, it doesn’t explain how the Moskva was unable to defend itself against a small number of current-generation sea-skimming missiles (a threat that’s been around for at least a couple of decades).
Propaganda works by selecting some facts and amplifying them, all the while hiding others. Note how Ukrainian military losses are never reported, for example. Photos of destroyed Russian tanks are all over the place, but not a single photo of destroyed Ukrainian equipment. The coverage is very selective to paint a specific picture.