The official line of the Kremlin and state-friendly media is in line with Putin’s assessment – that Russia had no choice but to respond to Ukrainian “aggression”, and the military is crippling Ukraine’s defence capability while avoiding civilian casualties.
Alexander Kots, war correspondent from the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, who is stationed in Donbas, reported that on Wednesday evening “Ukraine tried to solve its territorial issue by force”, but rebel fighters had beaten back a Ukrainian advance across the Donets River.
It's hard to believe that even the Russian population could believe that. But if your news coverage doesn't show the footage of 1.7 million of Ukraine's 41 million people fleeing to other country in just the last 11 days, if they don't see the western news footage of Russian artillery decimating Ukraine cities and slaughtering unarmed civilians, if you don't see footage of Russians declaring cease-fires and then killing unarmed Ukrainians as they just try to leave the war-torn area, violating their own cease-fire, then maybe the Pravda version is believable.
