To think the adoration of Zelensky in the UK feels very wrong?

[WarWhatIsItGoodFor]

Exactly that. Why are UK politicians lapping it all up and hanging on to his every word? The laughter from MPs when he said he enjoyed English tea but now wants English planes… in what sense is that funny? He is wanting war planes to cause more bloodshed, death and destruction. I hope this doesn’t lead to Russian retaliation.

What a surprise! Now hopefully they will FO and stop spreading Russian propaganda.

MN should be doing much more to ensure their site is not targeted by shills & bots, it's fine for people to hold differing opinions and it's good to have a debate in good faith, but when it's a proven fact that social media is being bombarded with Russian disinformation the media owners should be doing everything within their power to counter that.

Or, you could just make your own goddamn mind up?

This discussion is pretty much unreadable due to the long screeds supposedly unmasking 'bots' from people who clearly don't have a clue as to what one is ie an algorithm that pishes out words which broadly match a topic, forever.

I haven't seen any of that.

I've seen loads of mega posts from general gordon types hell bent on unmasking imaginary enemies though.

I love the smell of whingeing tankie in the morning.

Lucky that others can pick it up, report it to mumsnet and get confirmation that some of the posters here are bad faith actors for you then, isn't it?
.

As several people've said, genuine posters who disagree are one thing. People who are pushing the Russian line are a different thing and have no place in a genuine discussion.

@BashirWithTheGoodBeard @ReleaseTheDucksOfWar @CPL593H you have been doing excellent work on this thread. Thank you for tirelessly countering misinformation and providing useful facts and context.

<sigh>

Technically, a bot is indeed a computer spewing out automated content, programmed by its owner.

However, in normal daily language people often refer to humans who fulfil the same function - ie spewing content programmed by their owner – as bots. Even though they are in fact shills.

This is not a misunderstanding, it's intentional. It's a deliberate reference to puncture the illusion.

Is there anything else you and that other poster (now apparently banned) would like explained to you?

I second this. This is incredibly important work you are doing to counter Russian misinformation for free and without being on someone's payroll. Your knowledge in itself is extensive and worthy of admiration. So thank you.

Not forgetting @PerkingFaintly and all other contributors who hold the line. Appreciating your efforts.

(Just to be clear, my post above was to the poster at 02:15 today who complained that we didn't know bots were computer algorithms.)

Thank you!

On the bot point, it's interesting that over the past few pages we've seen a couple of instances of posters trying to focus on the use of one term, as an alternative to engaging with the bigger picture. It's not an unusual tactic on the internet.

Timely reminder again from a very influential source, the Institute for the Study of War, about how Russia is heavy on information and propaganda warfare:

"Russia has partially regained the ability to conduct successful information campaigns in support of strategic objectives and even discrete operational aims. Russian hybrid warfare theory has long called for the integration of information campaigns and military operations, with information operations sometimes taking precedence over kinetic activity... Russia skillfully conducted multiple information campaigns over the two decades preceding the re-invasion of Ukraine in February 2022"

also: www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates

"Russian information campaigns have supported a continuous strategic objective of deterring or slowing the West’s provision of material support to Ukraine."

This works at several levels, aimed at leaders but also very much at democratic grassroots and social media, so people put pressure on their leaders to withdraw support for Ukraine.

Yes. Fascinating how some people are so keen to try and pooh pooh the idea that the Russian state might be trying to use disinformation tactics on a popular UK website, isn't it?

It did amuse me that at 08/02/2023 23:42 the Previously Banned Poster diligently explained the difference between a bot and a "paid social media poster".

Then carefully stated a few posts later that they were "certainly not a bot".

Sooo... no comment on being a shill then...

I stay away from these threads because my opinion is too different from the majority and, frankly, I don't want to be abused.

I will say what a did a couple of years ago. The actual Ukrainian government was imposed by money from the USA in a so-called Revolution of Dignity, ousting the government elected by in elections..

Also search the Azov regiment, the Nazi ideology Ukrainian arm group fighting in the Donbass against Russian-speaking people, which atrocities are well documented, and have always been a part of the Ukrainian government. The Azov regiment has been expanded and incorporated into the Ukrainian Offensive Guard Program in 2023.

What we read in news and watch on TV, has little to do with why this war is about.

Thank you, not sure at all I deserve it though, although @BashirWithTheGoodBeard @ReleaseTheDucksOfWar and several other posters certainly do.

Ah, right on cue, another one. It sounds like you're in the category of worst people on the far left rather than worst people on the far right, though if you're actually a fash lover rather than a tankie please let me know and I'll amend accordingly.

There's really something uncomfortably close to racist about the way in which some Westerners trying to sound anti imperialist completely ignore any Ukrainian agency, discount the idea that the people might actually want self-determination and have the same right to choose a (flawed) leader as anyone else. They're not like us. Not a fully realised nation or people. It has to be all about the Americans, because nothing in this worldview is ever allowed to be about anything else. Russia's significant Nazi problem always goes unmentioned here too, because racism isn't a problem when it threatens your worldview.

Additionally, the complete failure to acknowledge what the Russian state has done to the people of Donbass also comes from a failure to acknowledge them as truly people like you are. It's not a problem for the men to have been fed into the meat grinder, for Russia to have established torture camps there, for the cities to have been razed to the ground... Russian speakers in the Donbass are collateral.

There's really something uncomfortably close to racist about the way in which some Westerners trying to sound anti imperialist completely ignore any Ukrainian agency, discount the idea that the people might actually want self-determination and have the same right to choose a (flawed) leader as anyone else. They're not like us. Not a fully realised nation or people. It has to be all about the Americans, because nothing in this worldview is ever allowed to be about anything else.
Absolutely this. There are panel discussions at universities plenty of times in the last year on Ukraine featuring no Ukrainian voices and it doesn't seem to occur to any of the organisers how this seems perfectly normal because of the colonial mindset that is still hugely prevalent.

There's really something uncomfortably close to racist about the way in which some Westerners trying to sound anti imperialist completely ignore any Ukrainian agency, discount the idea that the people might actually want self-determination and have the same right to choose a (flawed) leader as anyone else.

Yes.

The line in Russian propaganda is that Ukrainians are Russian really but have forgotten it under the influence of malign Western actors.

It completely and utterly ignores the fact that Ukrainians might want to make up their own minds - and did, in Maidan, because the Russian-aligned president was so corrupt.

The fact that so many Ukrainians have fled Russian occupation and so many picked up arms to fight should show that the Ukrainians can and do make up their own minds.

The fact that in the first days of the war desperate Ukrainian mothers were putting unaccompanied children onto the train, some of them 3 years old, should also show how Russian occupation is viewed.

It has to be all about the Americans,

It is. Since WWII America has instigated or involved in the following wars, well outside their borders:

Korean war
Vietnam war
Laos (Indochina war)
Parmesian (Indonesia war)
Lebanon
Dominican Civil War
Cambodian Civil War
Invasion of Grenada
Bombing of Libya
Persian War
Invasion of Panama (to keep control of the Panama Canal)
Gulf war
Somali war
Serbian/Croatian intervention
Haiti civil war
Kosovo intervention
Niger intervention
Iraq/Syria
Ukraine..

The US is also the only Western country to drop an atomic bomb on civilians (Japan) or use awful chemical warfare against civilians in Vietnam (Napalm) with devastating consequences. They also used and tested chemical warfare in Grenada.

None of these wars ever threatened the security of the US. The US keep engaging in wars thousands of km away because they want to control world resources. Everything else is bullshit.

What America did wrong is a separate issue from Ukraine needing to repel the Russian invasion of their country with the help of foreign weapons.

The current Ukraine government is not the result of the "Revolution of Dignity", or indeed any revolution.

Zelenskyy was elected in 2019, in an election which fell due as normal, and even his political party was new.

The "Revolution of Dignity" mentioned was in 2014. Before that there was an "Orange Revolution" in 2004.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution

Since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has had a serious of lurches as it comes to grips, or not, with the legacy of corruption, with accusations of electoral fraud (2004), and with trying to manage the influence of its very large neighbour and former colonial power, Russia.

Hiya again racist.

This is not the best argument for a Russian apologist like you to be making, bearing in mind their imperialism, warmongering and the way they prop up the Assad regime which, whaddya know, uses chemical weapons on civilians. Interestingly you've had the brains to leave Afghanistan out, which tells me that you do actually understand what a glass houses and throwing stones this situation is.

But anyway, you also presumably understand that the above is not a comprehensive list of all the wars in the last century, and therefore that wars can exist without the US having started them. So with that in mind, there's a missing step here. You haven't explained how eg the US intervention in Somalia tells us that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is America's fault. I think we could all do with a laugh.