Links and Stuff
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ ASB Military News, banned from Twitter.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster - crowd-funded U.S journalist, mostly pro-Russian, works on the ground near warzones to report news and talk to locals.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it's a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
With the entire western media sphere being overwhelming pro-Ukraine already, you shouldn't really need more, but:
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Yesterday's discussion post.
I hate to do the reddit thing of just saying "this" but that's basically all I can say, other than an elaboration.
At the beginning of the conflict, I think we all, correctly, suggested that this was an inter-imperialist war in which the working class of Ukraine and Russia are being pitted against each other and that while Ukraine was a bad country and something needed to happen at some point before the Nazi paramilitaries overthrew the government and created a geopolitical tumour in Eastern Europe that could spread to the rest of the body, maybe this wasn't it. That was a reasonable interpretation of what the war was at that time. And there was lots of taking shots at Putin for extremely valid reasons. Like, in this very update, there's an article on how the Russian government continues to attack the LGBT in Russia. It's almost tiring to say that Putin is not a good person personally for a hundred different reasons.
However, as time has gone by since then, it's become increasingly clear to me, and @granit, and hopefully everybody else, that this is a genuine fracture in the US global hegemony. It's not a culture war thing; it's not countries saying that they dislike the US or NATO (e.g. Macron saying NATO was approaching brain death) but then proceeding to not do anything with their dislike; it's not somebody in some random parliament making a statement about how the United States has done harm to the world; it's not the election of somebody vaguely left-wing in a relatively powerless country before they then negotiate with themselves to become a neoliberal. This is a rupture in the global capitalist order and a re-orientation of globalism and power relations. This actually matters. This cannot be shoved in a corner like coronavirus was. And Russia was the one to initiate that rupture, at potentially great risk to themselves, for reasons that aren't necessarily caused by a principled anti-imperialism, but nonetheless amount to that.
We need to end the stranglehold of the United States on the rest of the world. We need to lift the boots off the neck of the working class before they can even think about rising up and dusting themselves off and taking control of the world and creating socialism and then communism. And, to adapt that famous saying, we're doing that with the countries and governments we have, not the countries we want. It would have been awesome if Cuba and Venezuela and so on had created some kind of AES alliance; it would have been amazing if China had finally decided to stand up and engage in the world beyond peaceful development and sanctioned the fuck out of the United States or something. But Russia was the country that took the plunge, when it was backed into a corner with no way out but through, and that's the reality we live in.
Just like it was in 1917 and in WW2. Russia, whether they chose this fate or not, are world historical guardians against European fascism and colonialism. Not for any principled reason but due to the peculiarities of their geography, resources & conditions. There is a phrase in Russian which roughly translates to “Demons from the West”. Russia has been the gatekeepers between the Eastern World and the Western World, forced to play mediator and to settle disputes with force when the West invades and encroaches every couple decades.
After the USSR collapsed and Russia was totally humiliated and defeated, the triumphant West viciously and mercilessly looted the Russians and kicked them while they were down. The Russians tried to bend the knee and join the west as a vassal and were refused.
This is the inevitable outcome of the Russophobia and chauvinism of the west
It is wild that Russia tried for years to join, and then placate, the west and was snubbed and denied every time.
Which doesn’t even really make sense. The west should have accepted them into NATO and made them another vassal/puppet like South Korea or Japan. Instead they were too hellbent on revenge and huffing too much Cold War ideology, and just wanted to punish Russia instead. They pushed too hard and Russia began to push back and reconstitute itself as anti-West. They could have had an extremely powerful ally but instead they were so arrogant they thought they could just have another colony
The worst thing is this conflict is the fact that liberalism and the great man theory is integrated into people's conscious that we can never have a real discussion on the political implication of the War or of Russia in general. Every time you point out something about western narrative, people would keep going back to how questioning the narrative is being pro-putin.
Do people not understand that what was done to Russia in the 90s and the condition we left behind creates the perfect ingredient to have a Strongman politician with revanchist policy towards the west that tries for 50 years to destroy the legacy of the USSR (regardless if the ideologies that strongman expresses towards it)? Mark Ames in RWN said it once on an episode about Navalny said the same shit: ''Navalny can act like a Liberal democratic poster boy all he wants, but as soon as he discovers that Russia will never be consider as an equal to the west, he will tone into an ultra-nationalist (as if he didn't have a history in the past).