Again, I simply require somewhat less validation of a lot of the info put out by RT or Putin, Lavrov, etc. But I don't think that you really understand the concept of validation.
So in the beginning of the war, when Putin was saying there was no war, and you were repeating it, how did you go about validating that? Putin said so, and you found a video online of someone else saying it? Is that it?
LOCAL IN UKRAINE "NO WAR HERE" & COMPLETELY FAKE ASS MSM NEWS FOOTAGE & NARRATIVE
https://www.bitchute.com/video/htTj6cGnTgZC/This is turning into a pretty good comedy. Especially enjoyable is watching the reactions of the (highly vaxxed) mouth breathers who watch the mainstream media and think it's real.
I don't recall RT, Putin, etc having much to do with my initial assessment that a lot of Western press and social media psy-ops were fake. The fakes stand by themselves are have stood the test of time. If you have material of Putin saying clearly that there were not Russian boots/tracks on the ground at a time when their were, I missed it. They may have passed off some of the initial actions as part of the civil war with DPR doing the shooting, but I don't remember it specifically one way or another. It's certainly not the case that I watch Kremlin propaganda like a hawk and as a sole source of truth.
Early on it kind of looked like the whole thing could have been a Western fake war. After a while it became clear that yes, there was some real shooting going on, but it bore little resemblance to the garbage that the Western corp/gov media was supplying.
To the degree that Russia 'faked me out', it was by trying to take an especially light touch on civilians, infrastructure, etc. Seems that that was an experiment which produced mixed results and ultimately they switched to a more standard mode of achieving their objectives using typical military force. Through it all, what (relatively little) Russia said through their official channels and more closely controlled media outlets (e.g., RT) tended to be terse and factual. Other entities said all kinds of wild things either under sanction of the state or not. That is to be expected.
As usual for me over the last decade or so, the highest grade of info in my own ranking is spontaneous, accidental, or dedicated citizen 'man-on-the-street' type reporting. It remains the case that it's fairly easy to tell a local civilian who just stumbled out of being held captive as a human shield for Azov vs. some USAID employee who was holed up in a 'theater' with a bunch of others citizens but stepped out for a minute just before 'the Russians' bombed it.