Excellent analysis by George Beebe.
Reality Is Winning the Ukraine Narrative War
The dominant army in this information war has comprised most Western governments and leading media organs, abetted by a formidable array of public relations firms working in partnership with the Ukrainian government. It has insisted that the Ukraine war is best understood as a modern-day variation of Nazi Germany’s World War II aggression, with Putin reprising the Hitlerian role of revanchist dictator seeking to grab land and dominate Europe. Unless he is stopped through resolute military force, they argue, his armies will move from Ukraine to the Baltic states, Poland, and beyond.
Arrayed against this army has been a loose band of realist experts and anti-establishment skeptics who contend that the war’s origins more closely resemble those of World War I. To varying degrees, they acknowledge that Russia’s paternalistic attitudes towards Ukraine have played a significant role in Moscow’s motivations, but they argue that the invasion is fundamentally the product of what international relations theorists call a “security dilemma.” Steps by NATO to bolster the security of its members and aspirants were perceived as threatening by Moscow. Aggressive efforts by Russia to block these moves threatened the West, producing a spiral of action and reaction that continued to escalate absent diplomatic efforts to arrest it.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/reality-is-winning-the-ukraine-narrative-war/