Ukraine Thread

[Husar]

I think you are mixing up two different notions - "free" and "unbiased". While US and UK press is certainly as free as the German one, one may question their being unbiased.
But, to be more accurate, all these terms are overgeneralizations: I think in either country there are various media which can be more or less free and/or more or less unbiased.

According to the index I linked, the bolded part is definitely not the case...
I'm also not confusing anything, I think less freedom of the press leads to more bias as the press sees itself forced to adapt to certain things. This can happen for a number of reasons, like the investors want to make money and the writers want to keep their jobs, so they write what the market demands to get more clicks or sell more papers. In more nationalistic countries this automatically leads to a bias for "our side" because writing a pro-Putin article in the US is not going to make you much more popular.
On internal issues it's easier to write something negative even in nationalistic countries since internal issues affect "our guys" and therefore you basically still support "our side".
I'm not saying the US government sends armed guys to the New York Times in order to make them write bad things about Putin, I'm saying they don't even try to see things from another perspective, which might be valid as well. In order to be unbiased or neutral, one has to take other peoples' perspectives into account for the most part.
There can still be a conclusion in favor of one side, like I also think Putin is "more wrong", but to completely disregard Russian interests as though they're not allowed to have any while you push your own relentlessly is inherently biased.

What I mean to say is that combating popaganda doesn't mean creating another propaganda. It may as well be spreading truthful information and revealing the falsehood of the aggressor's propaganda. These cases certainly don't qualify as "a wrong in response".

Your country is at war, to think that it is just interested in spreading truthful information is somewhat laughable.
Let me quote the article:

Anyone can join the virtual army through the website set up by the ministry. Enlisted "soldiers" then receive emails with tasks such as monitoring social media and taking on trolls by promoting Ukraine's messages in online discussions.
They remain anonymous and are reportedly encouraged to create fake accounts to protect their identities.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/25/tech...ex.html?iid=EL

Now I wouldn't ask them to make their names and addresses public but it seems as though noone will know that they are basically shills of the Ukrainian government, which is the major issue with the Russian trolls as well. That they pose as "concerned citizens" when they really promote a government agenda.

No matter who may provide the analysis (or rather suppositions) of Putin's plans, it is only he who can say how close are our guesses. And he is unlikely to do it (at least not now). But I would like to hear your vision of his plans and we'll see if it is as sound as you believe.

I have no idea what he is going to do next, but that doesn't automatically make all the claims that he's going to conquer Europe true.
As you say, it's mostly just guesses and I do not have to have my own detailed theory to say that some seem a bit over the top for now.

The same holds if you view someone as your idol.

Who do you think is my idol then?