Look closer at the war and view the mainstream Western media with skepticism. Reports are not accurate.

I've watched wars come and go and the media is always full of lies and deliberately deceitful. One thing that can be telling is what the media is NOT showing you.

You are not seeing POW camps full of Russian soldiers. If Ukraine was winning, they would have captives to show off. But they do not.

Ukraine lost 8000 men in Mariupol. That is not the sort of thing that happens to victorious countries. It is a serious defeat.

The forces in Donbas have been encircled and cannot be reinforced or resupplied. They are unable to maneuver and will be assaulted by artillery until they surrender. There are 60k men in this situation and it is a disaster.

Look, I can tell I'm pissing you off and you're not going to listen to or agree with anything I'm saying. That's OK. But consider this one experience:

Back in the Iraq war, I was completely for it. I believed that Saddam had nuclear weapons and that America was saving the world from his nuclear terror. Of course, he had no such weapons.

I also believed we were winning the war until one day I woke up to a story that said we were actually doing poorly, and the pentagon had deciced to send thousands of extra troops to turn the situation around. It was quite shocking to hear that we were actually losing! The news had reported no such thing.

So two serious lies. One to get us to agree to a war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths for no good reason at all, and another lie to cover up American casualties and poor progress.

Now comes the Ukrainian war. I'm not going to get fooled so easily again.

After this war is over (if there is an "after") think carefully about the difference from what you read in the news and what you will then know to be true. You will find that much of the information you thought was true and from trusted sources will turn out to have been deliberately deceitful and false.

You'll feel a little ashamed and dumb, but get past that. They're very good at telling their lies. But the valuable lesson you'll learn is what lies sound like and what the pressure to conform and support a war feels like. And what they don't say is often much more important than what they do say.