Philosophy: "A Priori" Reasoning

 I saw on television the other day the Russian ambassador to the United Kingdom being interviewed concerning alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine. I was treated to a classic example of "a priori" reasoning from the ambassador: that is, deduction from first principles rather than from observed data. His fundamental premiss was that "Russian soldiers do not bomb civilians, nor do they loot, rape or murder; and it therefore follows that they have not committed such crimes in Ukraine, and that any evidence to the contrary must necessarily be fake." The logic of this argument is impeccable, but  it depends for its validity entirely on the truth of the premiss. The interviewer, by contrast, challenged the ambassador by citing evidence, some of which, he said, he had seen himself; and from this he put forward an inductive argument that war crimes had probably been committed. Not surprisingly, there was no meeting of minds.