> Propaganda is trying very hard to deny any killings of civilians that do happen, if the goal was genocide they would try to portray Ukrainians as less than humans
I fail to follow the logic here. If I beat you with a baseball bat, and will try very hard to deny that, does it mean my goal was not to beat you with a baseball bat? What if at the same time I will post articles in popular blogs about how you are a great human being and we are basically brothers?
Let me rephrase it: if the goal was the genocide then there would be much, much more civilian casualties. For now, civilian death count is slightly more than a total deaths from the car accidents in the whole country in the previous years. Doesn't pass the sniff test.
It may be semantics, but even by law a murder is different based on person's motivation.
If John kills Jane because she is black it is different than killing her by reckless driving.
In this war civilians are getting killed because of disregard for human lifes while trying to kill the military, not intentionally because of the group they belong to.
I am not trying to say they are not killing people, it's the intention that I am questining. How can it be a genocide of Ukranians if Putin is killing a bunch of Russians that live there as well? And if there are many Ukranians in Russia's military doing the same thing.
I fail to follow the logic here. If I beat you with a baseball bat, and will try very hard to deny that, does it mean my goal was not to beat you with a baseball bat? What if at the same time I will post articles in popular blogs about how you are a great human being and we are basically brothers?