Sooo… who benefits from the manipulation of the data? Ukraine because it makes Russia look bad? Is it that simple?

What you’re describing as an “issue” is just the way the fediverse works.

There’s no central authority that determines the ruling /c/gaming instance or whatever.

If you tried to create one then anyone could just fork lemmy to disregard the central authority.

Lemmy is not reddit, nor should it attempt to be.