The Russian media’s perversion of the facts is sometimes so horrible that it is hard to focus on much else, you feel...

The Russian media’s perversion of the facts is sometimes so horrible that it is hard to focus on much else, you feel almost compelled to stop everything and perform an autopsy on the truth. But in doing so, you allow Russian lies, rather than the crimes themselves, to become the focal point of criticism. This is a tried and tested technique for shifting the focus from moral aberration to an abstracted conversation about who is lying, who is exaggerating, what is truth and how we define reality. – Jade McGlynn, Russia’s War (Polity, 2023), chap. 4, last section.