I agree with you. At least we can be certain it was not the western supplied cluster shells that they promised not to use in populated areas: Ukrainians have been very strict about sticking to thekt promises.
As for Russians we also know they have been lying for as long as we know them, I grep up in a country on Russias doorstep and even as a child I heard my dad joking about them and their somewhat conflicted relationship with facts.
But it wasn't until this war that I realized that this isn't just old jokes but todays reality: "We will of course not attack Ukraine!", "Moskva runs bybits own engine towards Sevastopol", "Ukrainians shoot prisoners in the knees" (but they have thick Russian accent and a day later a video of the rehearsal video is released and everyone can see how they rehearsed "getting shot in the knees"), "Ukrainian shelled Olevnika" (but no Russian guards were hot) etc etc.
I was taught to use Ubuntu Linux by a middle aged engineer in another field who demanded "the brown operating system" on his computer over a decade ago, so yes, I agree, day to day Linux hasn't been hard for over a decade.