Image is from @Parsani@hexbear.net, who got it from @RNAi@hexbear.net, who got it from Discord.
Thread update: Prigozhin's fucking dead.
The BRICS summit will begin on Tuesday and end on Thursday, with various world leaders, politicians, and representatives meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa.
America's anxiety about the summit has been obvious. They have been complicating the event by pushing for the arrest warrant for Putin to be upheld if he steps foot in the country. While this is a remarkably dangerous and unhinged thing to do - even by America's standards - to the leader of a nuclear superpower who could end the world within an hour, it does betray their desperation. Unfortunately, for those of us who wanted to see Putin surrounded by an army of security guards fending off people holding handcuffs, he has sent his Foreign Minister, Lavrov, in his place. Additionally, America has likely been spreading rumors about the lack of interest in gaining new members in the organization.
With apparently 20 countries formally seeking membership and another 20 informally doing so, the bloc has been elevated, whether they like it or not, to the position of the international vanguard of the non-western world. It is extremely important to say that this is not the same as it becoming an anti-American bloc, and many of them (including original members Brazil and India) wish to keep a friendly relationship with the United States. Nonetheless, with the United States' policy of "if you are not with us, you are against us," and as the US seeks to weaken China, in coming years many of them might find themselves under hostile pressure.
BRICS has to try and solve many problems if they are going to chip away at America's stranglehold of the world economy. These problems - like mitigating the dollar's status as a global reserve currency, and America's dominant role in the world economy - are extremely complicated, and will takes years, even decades, to be overcome. Therefore, one should temper their expectations and excitement for this summit. It took tens of millions of deaths in cataclysmic wars, and then several more decades, for America to reach its current position. I see no reason to believe why its downfall will be any less bloody and elongated.
To end on a less depressing note, I've been searching for appropriate anagrams given the list of countries that seek to join BRICS. Obviously not all of them will make it in, but even so. The best I've come up with is HIBISCUS EMANCIPATES BBBBKKRVV.
(also, "bulletins and news discussion" can be rearranged to "libidinous newsstands uncles".)
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
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 relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
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 ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
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
Almost every Western media outlet.
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.
So I guess it's safe to call Wagner a failure from a realpolitik perspective? The goal of Wagner, and why it was created/allowed to exist by Russia, was to deploy/project Russian military power outside of Russia's borders without having to officially deploy the Russian military.
However, a lot of Wagner's foreign operations have failed, (Mozambique, Mali currently, being blown up by the US in Syria) and it's reliance on fascist elements as a Private Military Contactor (Utkin, the name, the skull symbol) led to an ideological situation which they believed they could, and actually attempted to, coup the Russian government. So now that all the people in charge of Wagner have been assassinated and the creation had to be killed by its creator as it got to powerful, I think a sober analysis would conclude Wagner has failed in its mission. I find it hard to believe the successes in Bakhmut and the CAR are worth all this.
I think any leftist could have easily seen that creating a PMC with links to fash ideology to exert foreign influence was always going to fail/backfire, but alas, Russia is led by neoliberal fools so they did it anyways.
Yeah, it was an... interesting experiment, but not one that should be repeated.
imo, it's what happens if you look at the Western PMCs that operated in the Middle East and you're a neoliberal and you go "Wow, that's a great idea, we should have some of these!" without understanding the full picture of American involvement in the Middle East and why those PMCs could even function at all. Wagner has some competent fighters but I don't think they are better than the typical Russian soldier in the actual army.
You see some Russians who are like "I can't BELIEVE that the best and most innovative fighting force in the Russian army has been taken away and their leaders killed. The Ministry of Defence has no idea what it's doing and is leading us to catastrophe. Without these bright-eyed, inventive, hypercompetent men, the whole army is going to fall into a bureaucratic nightmare."
like, no, Wagner's performance in Bakhmut is demonstrative of what happens with any competent fighting force if you, as a general, are willing to accept high casualties. Whenever Russia has accepted high casualties, they've advanced quickly (e.g. at the beginning of the war near Kiev). As has Ukraine. The rest of the Russian army's slow or stagnant territorial progress isn't because they're all dimwits and the generals in charge over there are nepotic failsons, though they might also be that, it's because the entire point is to move slowly and attrit Ukraine because there's fucking minefields and trenches everywhere and you don't want to send your men out to attack them until they've already been neutralized.
Sometimes a country's leadership has got to re-learn why you never use mercs unless you have no other option, and hopefully this has been the learning moment for Russia.
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It's wild that "Mercenaries obviously have no loyalty and if given enough power will develop their own agendas and undermine you" has been a lesson of war going back to the Bronze Age (or maybe even before) and people still don't learn it
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