Propaganda and Ukraine
Crimes like those to have befallen Bucha, a satellite town of Kyiv. The Ukrainian government claims to have uncovered the bodies of 280 civilians. Not all of these were people caught in crossfire. Corpses were found with their hands tied and bullet holes in the back of their heads. There are also reports of partially burned bodies left at the side of the road, and evidence is being documented for the International Criminal Court with a view to bring prosecutions. Despite dozens of residents speaking to the press about the killings they witnessed, the increasingly ridiculous Sergei Lavrov branded evidence of war crimes a "fake attack."
With a whirlwind of propaganda blowing through the media, how to tell the truth from a lie? As it happens, it's not too difficult. An application of common sense or Occam's Razor helps. Which is more likely to be true? Did the forces of Putin's regime, as the occupying army, do it? Or did the Ukrainians "dress" the wrecked town with executed and mutilated bodies? To ask the question is to answer it. There is also context. As acres of footage of burnt out and wrecked residential districts have shown, the Russian military has shown no compunction about flattening civilian buildings. Unless you believe the Ukrainians did it themselves just to make the invading power look bad.
And there is the rhetoric coming from Russian media about Putin's aims and objectives in Ukraine. What was once a "special military operation" is now assuming the proportions of a war of annihilation. From RIA Novosti, a state-owned-and-run news outlet, we have 'What Russia Should Do About Ukraine'. Ostensibly a comment piece, it reads like something out of the Great Patriotic War reconditioned for the 21st century. It says Ukrainians are "passive Nazis" and "Nazi enablers" and deserve "just punishment", as well as "ideological suppression" involving "harsh censorship". It also calls for the ceding of Ukrainian sovereignty to Russia for "denazification" and "deukrainification", and be occupied like a defeated enemy state. It goes on that the idea of Ukraine is de facto anti-Russian, and that everyone who has supported "the Nazis" must "experience war and terror". There you have it, straight from the horse's mouth.
As previously noted, the fact NATO has a clear interest in Ukraine defeating Russia, or at the very least investing them so Russia's military bleeds white and is humbled by a power many times weaker than them does not overdetermine the situation. Ukraine is not the West's dupe. Wherever there are wars and revolutions, the US and its allies will intervene to shape them in a direction conducive to their interests. Sometimes they're successful, sometimes not. In the case of Ukraine, rhetorical support backed by weapons supplies and cash gifts does not mean Ukrainians have no right to resist, or that they should lay down their arms as some idiots on the left are arguing. Bombed out blocks of flats are not blows against US and UK imperialism, and to pretend otherwise is to peddle Moscow's line.
Therefore, taken in the round, the substance of distinguishing between the types of propaganda aren't really that difficult. One serves the aim of subduing Ukraine and transforming it into a vassal state, with dark hints of further mass killings and repression. And the other is of a people fighting for their very existence. These are the filters that matter.
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