> I apologize in advance since I'm a bit short for time at the moment and I'll just post a short(-ish) reply to the questions I can answer from the top of my head (more or less).

That's okay. Totally get that. Same boat. Thanks for status.

> The medal forged by the Russian Govt. itself is the most damning evidence

Couple thoughts.

The article you link to concludes that the 2/20 date makes sense for being dates that snipers became active.

It's also easy to explain the 2/20 date as a day that contingency planning and deployment started, and the reason the medal exists is because the contigency plan needed to be executed.

Finally I checked the source of the Crimean medal story. I am not able to find (although it has been very difficult to search because I do not speak Russian) any statement made by Russia regarding the medal or it being a mistake, as claimed by Radio Free Europe. Also, provided that RFE is a propaganda outlet, and we're trying to exclude them as sources, how do you feel about this? In particular there's this interesting blog post about how the British propaganda effort made up a fake German medal in analogous circumstances [1].

Finally, I do believe that the medal is real and the 2/20 date is real. But I'm not sure how to interpret the 2/20 day other than as the beginning of contingency planning. It's 100% true that Russia wanted to annex Crimea and designed plans to do it. There's no debate from me there.

> Many of its statements are effectively regurgitated Russian state media news pieces, many of which are lies, while others are twisted to further a propagandistic agenda.

It does sound quite a lot like the State Department. Of course Russia's propaganda has always been a bit more crass. So are we at a point where no official statements can be trusted? If so we're really limiting our sources. Is there a department of Russia that you trust? It's sort of hard to cite material if anything from any source in Russia is knocked out of consideration.

Anyway, there are non-Russian sources that were presented. It would still be difficult to explain the Der Speigel numbers matching the RT numbers so closely, etc. I don't mind if you can't or don't have time to pursue this line any more - Academi/Greystone/Blackwater presence is a side conversation to the main discussion.

> Sure, but first: most of the well-known media outlets in Russia are state-owned or controlled/censored. Because of this there's practically no difference between them with respect to the journalistic integrity (or lack thereof) in their reporting.

Yes.

I meant a source for the drinking the blood of babies thing. But the crucifixion one is pretty good. That's pretty silly, Russia...

I do not know what to make of the stopfake website (it's the first time I have run into it.) Here's a neat one for the US news, in case it is useful to you [2]. Regarding fake news in the United States, there has been similar coverage. Of course first comes the reports of WMDs in Iraq, the DoD Analyst Program and then media blackout [3], and plenty of other examples of media manipulation from the US government [4]. I totally get that Russia and RT are more crass.

Anyway, there are other sources listed. If you don't want to use RT that's fine with me, but we should probably avoid a bunch of different news outlets in that case and be sure to reply to the non-RT ones.

[[Back to what was mentioned before...]]

We should consider consolidating the conversation. There are lots of interesting things to be said, but there's a lot that hasn't been addressed and there is significant danger of too much rat-holing. I think you agree with the thesis that the US has been pushing politics, activists, demonstrators and interest groups in the Ukraine toward Europe through the use of CSOs and their funding of NGOs, and organizing a replacement to Yan evidenced by the leaked tapes on DemocracyNow and by the USAID documents that clearly state US Foreign Policy objectives and procedures. (Interesting aside: Secretary of State Kerry's son is has recently become a major stakeholder in Ukraine oil)...

I think we differ about how okay that is - you'll say that it's legal or acceptable. Can you correct me if I'm wrong about your agreeing that both covert and overt action have been and are taken in Ukraine and other states by the US to pursue policy objectives?

[1] https://ersjdamoo.wordpress.com/2014/05/01/mystery-of-the-cr...

[2] http://www.emergent.info/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_military_analyst_prog...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8933443