Image is of Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, with Sudanese Foreign Minister, Maryam al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, at a news conference in Khartoum.
Russia, China, and the United States have been scrambling for Africa over the last year.
Lavrov has recently been to Mali, Mauritania, and Sudan. Last year, he went to South Africa, Eswatini, Angola, Eritrea, Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda, and the PRC. I'm actually having trouble finding consistent lists, he's been zipping around so much. He's reinforced ties with Sudan and their Russian naval base, and South Africa is holding naval exercises with China and Russia.
Qin Gang, the new Chinese Foreign Minister, has been to Angola, Gabon, Benin, Egypt, and Ethiopia - notably, the first diplomatic tour he's been on since being appointed FM, as others before him (in a 30 year tradition).
Meanwhile, Janet Yellen has gone to Senegal, Zambia, and South Africa. And, of course, Biden invited leaders from all across Africa to the US-Africa Leaders Summit in December 2022.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
February 13th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 14th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 15th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 17th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 18th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
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. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
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. Beware of chuddery.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are fairly brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. The Duran, of which he co-hosts, is where the chuddery really begins to spill out.
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 ~ Now rebranded as Battlefield Insights, they do infrequent posts on the conflict.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
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 ~ One of the really big pro-Russian (except when they're being pessismistic, which is often) telegram channels focussing on the war. 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. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Any Western media outlet that is even vaguely liberal (and quite a few conservative ones too).
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.
Last week's discussion post.
A preliminary report concludes that Danish GDP grew by 3.4% last year. However much of the growth came from increased production in the medical industry december and might be due to a change in accounting practices where production abroad is counted as domestic rather than a real increase in productivity and bourgeois economists remains gloomy about the economic outlook.
love it when Novo Nordisk announces that they're having a recordbreaking year for profits and we all have to listen to the freaks in charge of the insulin patents speak as if they did anything other than cause suffering
I've wanted to read Imperialism in the 21st Century for a while now. Haven't gotten around to it but I have heard the author on a podcast or two. GDP is such a horrible stat for measuring your economy. The example he uses with an iPhone... say it costs $200 to make the phone in China and it sells for $1,000 in the US. That means $200 is added to Chinese GDP and $800 is added to US GDP. While I understand the rationale and how it sort of makes sense within the internal logic of bourgeois economics.... when you take a step back it makes you realize just how much of the economy of the global north is propped up on a house of cards. The $800 is part of GDP because someone was willing to pay for it. But no "real" economic activity takes place here.
Neoliberal ghoul logic is that a 100-person company that laid off half its staff and hires 150 contractors from the global south to fill in the gaps actually double its economic productivity because now 50 full-time employees can do what 100 full-time employees did before.