If you are now saying the Russians are pouring men and equipment into Ukraine, then why would you doubt reports which show cell phone videos of apc's and other equipment driving past or aerial surveillance? It's 2014. Stuff cannot be hidden.
Since this is one of your pet hobby horses and you trot it out from time to time, I'm going to show you one of the summaries of this news item. The source of the rumour was the commander of the separatist militia in Donetsk, Strelkov. Strelkov is a guy who has almost superstar status in Russia. He posted it on his VKontakte page. And about 20 minutes later, he removed it and put a less crazy explanation of the shoot-down on the page. Well known. Well documented. Strelkov is not a crank or crazy. He likely posted the story under orders from Moscow and then removed it again when those orders were countermanded.
The reason that this is significant is that Strelkov is not an ordinary blogger, of course. He's a famous guy whose VK page is followed closely in Russia and by Western intelligence.
Now if Russian media attempted to dismiss the theory later as "crazy", I haven't heard. Likely, they just chose to ignore it as a gaffe and moved on to something more juicy like a child crucifixion story.
But now it's your turn. You said you had a link showing Russian mainstream media dismissing the claim as a hoax. Let's see it. You speak Russian. I'm sure you have the link handy.
My link is below. It's Item #9 on the list of 10.
http://www.examiner.com/list/russia-s-top-10-lies-about-downed-malaysia-airliner
I'm not saying it "now". Go back. I have always said I believe Putin is supplying men and arms to Ukraine (except when I gave no opinion but instead said it was entirely possible), I've just always said there's no proof of it. Seriously, go back. Don't even trust my posting history, find your quoting of me. I've been saying it so much I felt like a broken record. I'm not arguing because I think your hunch that Russia is supporting the rebels is wrong, my point is that your "sources" are blatantly lying to you, and you trust them all the same. You've fallen for the propaganda machine, the same thing you accuse Russians of being so susceptible to. You keep going on about proof here or posts there or media reports here, but you can't read those posts, you can't read the media stories and you have no idea what your screenshots say because you can't speak the language. You're trusting other people to tell you, and when I call your sources on it and give you the information you need to verify it, you completely ignore them. You once accused me of spitting out snide comments but being short on proof, and yet I keep giving it to you. Sure, I'm not force feeding links, but you couldn't read the Russian or Ukrainian text on those pages anyway. I've given you the information you need to check the facts of the stories you link. I give you the tools, you either keep buying the propaganda or actually look into what I say and realize you've been duped. Not every article, of course. The western media, like the Russian media, has to put out real news at least sometimes, but if you HAVE been duped it means you CAN be duped which means you SHOULD be more critical and accept less blindly.
I have seen lots of video of APCs and arty driving around in Ukraine. "Russian" APC's they claim, but the footage shows either Ukrainian army equipment or Russian army equipment that is undergoing retrofit in Ukrainian factories. Could these have been vehicles that completed retrofit, were shipped back to Russia and that Russia has now funneled back into Ukraine? Sure, it's possible. But where's the proof? Suspicion isn't proof. I don't accept suspicion and possibility as proof, and neither should you. Not if you want to criticize others for falling for propaganda so quickly. If you aren't critical, how do you know you aren't falling for propaganda? Like I said, there is exactly 2 videos that claim to show Russian tanks moving across the border but actually show a Ukrainian-only model of tank, and 1 "intelligence report" that says the serial number from a tank shows it was one deployed back to Russia. That's it for proof. Everything else is circumstantial. Do you blindly trust intelligence reports? Considering the western intelligence reports initially claimed that the videos shows T-72's moving into Ukraine only to later amend it and say that they were Russian T-64M's while anyone can plainly see that they're Ukrainian T-64 BULAT's, I don't trust their intelligence reports at all. The fact that military intelligence confused a T-64 with a T-72 at all is horrendous. No wonder they keep bombing friendlies at war. If I had showed up to a ground-support mission briefing in a region anywhere near the former Soviet Union and I failed to distinguish a BMP-1 from a BMP-3 during the intelligence analysis, I'd be relieved of flight status... and they are a hell of a lot more similar than a T-64 and a T-72. If they can't even tell the difference between that, how can you trust them to recognize a Russian T-64M as compared to a Ukrainian T-64M (which has very subtle differences)? Of course, it's not a T-64M, so they're still wrong. But hey, how many people have good enough military equipment recognition to even know that a Ukrainian-only variant of the T-64 exists, let alone recognize it from a grainy video? Propaganda counts on people not knowing, if people knew, they wouldn't get away with it. But US military intelligence should, Ukrainian military intelligence should, and the fact that they still report the sightings as Russian T-64M's is all I need to know they're spinning a web of propaganda to control the narrative.
I'm well aware of the clown that came up with the MH17 theory. I'm also aware of the Russian news reports. Are you? I'd say no since by your own admission you can't read Russian. You link the Examiner now, but you had linked something else before. The examiner link is bullshit because it doesn't give a reference. Thanks for the thumbnail, Examiner, but I'd prefer they just gave the source. In any case, I've explained this before, but you obviously missed it, so I'll explain it again.
The "mainstream media" article that is linked to by the major Western news outlets that bothered to link it, refers to an article on vesti.ru. Vesti absolutely is a state-run, major news source. But the vesti article is a discussion of the various MH17 theories which it says, in plain Russian, range deep into the realm of conspiracy theory. As it lists each theory, it links to the source of the story. When they get to the claims that the bodies were all dead, the link is plainly available for anyone who wants to see it. On kp.ru. kp.ru is the website for the Komsomolskaya Pravda, which is the Russian equivalent of supermarket tabloid trash. We're not talking headlines like "Is Kim Kardashian pregnant again?" We're talking "Kim Karsashian had alien baby, Obama pledges to return baby to Martian overlords" headlines. THAT kind of tabloid.
So, did the mainstream media carry the story? Absolutely. And called it a wild conspiracy theory while giving links to the source so everyone can see it's tabloid garbage. Just to be fair, CNN carried stories on the various conspiracy theories around 9/11 too. The fact that they mention them in a segment on crazy conspiracy theories doesn't mean they were pushing them off as truth. Although if someone didn't speak English, I could probably write an article and tell them that's what it says and they'd get just enough off of Google Translate to believe me, assuming they bothered to verify the source.
I'm glad that you, a man who professes to speak virtually no Russian or Ukrainian, is so keenly aware of who is a "superstar" in Russia. I'm also glad you know why he "likely" posted stories and removed them. Such psychological prowess is nearly mind-reading. You should be studied.
My point remains: you read an article on how stupid Russians are and how filled with propaganda their media is, and you bought it. The truth didn't matter to you. You know a few crazy Russians on Facebook and use them as the hallmark by which you judge all Russians. Here's the truth: you fell for western propaganda. No reputable news agency carried the story that MH17 was filled with dead bodies in a serious manner or pushed it as fact. It never happened. It's literally one article on vesti poking fun of it and a few articles on "Aliens live among us" tabloids. That's it. You can quote as many English language articles you want, I went to the source, I read the story they all linked to, and I gave you the details you need to verify them. Follow the chain of links - from democraticunderground or whatever crap source it was you used that time to vesti. You don't have to read Russian, hover over the links, see where they lead. Find the one that links to kp.ru. You can use the sketchy Google translate to see the word "conspiracy" mentioned in the vesti article if you want and figure out that the link to kp.ru is indeed the one about dead bodies. Then you can Google "kp russian news" and see what the internet has to say about kp as a media outlet. All the facts I gave you, easily verifiable even by someone who doesn't speak Russian. The question is will you do it, or will you continue to blindly trust your western media simply because it supports your attitude that Russians are a gullible and horrible people? I suspect you won't bother. You'll just blindly trust your news. But if you do that, tell me how that makes you different from the "Russians" you claim believe their media stories blindly?
It's hard to admit, I know, but you drank the kool-aid. Not that every story is false or wrong, but some. And if some are, that should be enough to make you suspicious and not so eager to blindly trust them.
