One of the Russian Aerospace Force's most advanced—and most expensive—combat aircraft was reported to have been damaged on Saturday in a raid carried out by Ukrainian forces., drones struck the Akhtubinsk State Flight Test Center in southern Russia 365 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border, and a Sukhoi Su-57 is believed to have been badly damaged, possibly beyond repair.
This follows similar posts last week after the Iranian-back Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed to have successfully targeted the U.S. Navy'sThe fact that actual news stories are mocked is a bit of a concern, especially given that so many users of social media rely on those platforms as their primary source of news and information. Satire is increasingly becoming a form of misinformation and disinformation, even if that isn't the intent.
"What this episode points out is that a system of government such as ours demands that people be media savvy and willing to do their own digging to check the veracity of the information flooding onto social media platforms," Campbell continued.Also surprising in this latest incident is that the often vocal Russian propagandists haven't tried to conceal that the high-value aircraft may have come under attack.
"Putin's brand of autocracy has never been as strong as China's, and Putin's wasn't designed to stop all dissent, but instead was designed to control the dissent," added Schmidt."The critical part here is that the pattern in Russia has been not to criticize Putin but to criticize the military establishment and those beneath him. It isn't Putin making these mistakes, they'll publicize.