Quote Originally Posted by fillow View Post
Some things that may be useful to consider. I'm sure some or all of it is covered by Western media, but it may also be lost in the ocean of other news

- Majority of people in Russia (and Belarus for that matter) do not support the war, including many of those who actually supported Putin (until Feb 24 at least)

- Many, many, many people actively protest the war. Several thousand people in most major cities have been caught and jailed during the protests.

- Propaganda and censorship machine is working at full capacity. State media push the only allowed narrative: it is a special operation against a nazi regime that oppresses brotherly nation. People do seek the truth, nevertheless. I think I saw somewhere a report from BBC that their Russian-language broadcasting had its traffic tripled in recent days.

- Several biggest independent or semi-independent news outlets are under severe crackdown. Using the actual word war is not allowed, so is citing any sort of information not coming from the official (state) resources. The workaround here is that every few minutes news hosts had to interrupt themselves so say that [this and this] is not confirmed by the ministry of defense and that ministry of defense stresses that is a special military operation bla bla bla [but not a war].
This workaround, however, only worked for so long. Two of the biggest outlets (TV Rain and Echo of Moscow radio) had been taken off the air and their websites shut down. They continue working on Youtube, however. Smaller and regional media (radio, newspapers and websites) were also basically silenced.
Next in line is most likely Novaya Gazeta, which is led by last year's Peace Nobel Prize winner Muratov (who was nominated by "for the efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.") Won't be any surprise here.

Putin's regime had 21 years to mold the country into police state. Unfortunately, the propaganda often works and not enough people have realized just how deep in shit their own future is. (and many will still blame the west for it).
great post, didn't want to leave it on the bottom of the last page.