It all lacks context. Here’s eight seconds of a tank blowing up. Where was it shot? When? Was the explosion caused by a mine, a missile, or something internal to the tank? Is the tank Russian or Ukrainian?
In most cases the media outlet had no idea of the answers to those questions, never mind who shot the video and for what end.
Even if the media stumbled onto the basic who-what-where, the exploding-tank video is devoid of context. Was that the lead tank hit, stopping the Russian advance toward a village? Or was it a Russian tank that lingered in an open field and got picked off by a lucky shot, without much strategic consequence? One assumes clever hands can change a mini-Ukrainian flag to a spray-painted Z as necessary, because most of the hardware used by both sides is the same.
Some of the video might as well be doctored Ohio State-Michigan footage.
Ask Baghdad Bob how it works. As one commenter put it, he'd likely mimic Western press reports about Ukraine’s “lightning offensive.”
Nearly all of the mainstream media use the word “humiliating” to describe Russia’s losses. Russian defenses “collapsed” and they “fled in panic.”
This was widely attributed to the supposed “exhaustion” and “low morale” of Russian troops. As a result, the battle lines have been “redrawn,” and the war’s contours “reshaped.” Putin is said to be “livid and isolated.” The “Ukrainian victory shattered Russia’s reputation as a military superpower.”
At one point Ukraine boasted that it destroyed 509 Russian tanks using shoulder-fired missiles.
Maybe; one of the techniques of modern propaganda is to throw out some outrageous number, challenge people to disprove it, and then proclaim, 'you can’t disprove it, so I’m right.' So, no proof.
But history suggests 509 man-on-tank kills is a ridiculous figure. During Gulf War 1.0, one of the largest tank battles of modern times at 73 Easting saw Coalition forces destroy only 160 Iraqi tanks, and that was using the M-1 tank with its sophisticated aiming tech and night vision. Even at the famed Battle of the Bulge, only 700 tanks from both sides were destroyed.
