Fog of war is at its thickest right now. Honestly I have no idea what to believe anymore.
I've heard about a million "Russia plans to do X false flag operation" announcements in the last couple of weeks, all of which would be largely to the detriment of Russia, both in terms of causing it damage directly, as well as by giving ample provocation to its enemies (and even its 'friends') to justify any retaliation thinkable under the sun. And then I've seen posts showing victims in certain popular photos were paid actors. At this point it would be simpler for Ukraine to promote these stories and then go do them themselves. But then again, maybe that's the narrative Russia hopes to rely on, so they're promoting these stories themselves as some sort of "double bluff"? Except, the narrative isn't really important because nobody in the west has access to it anyway, and if anything people are being told that Russia sucks and can't even do a "single bluff" properly in the first place? Unless that's a triple bluff? Who knows. This is starting to have more levels of recursion than "Inception".
It reminds me a bit of that old joke. There's an attractive woman sitting in a train cabin. Next to her is a Russian man, and opposite both of them sits an American man (arbitrary nationalities chosen for the joke). Suddenly the train goes through a dark tunnel. In the middle of the darkness, a loud "slap" is heard. As the train comes out of the tunnel, the woman is surprised to see the American in front of her holding his cheek in pain, with a visible slap-mark. The woman thinks "What probably happened was that that filthy American tried to fondle me as we went through the tunnel, and must have fondled the Russian guy instead by accident, so he slapped him". The American thinks, "That filthy Russian must have tried to fondle the poor girl from the side as we went through the tunnel, and she must have thought it was me from the front instead, and slapped me". The Russian thinks "That was awesome. I can't wait for the next tunnel!"