Image is of Azerbaijan's President, Aliyev (left) and Armenia's President, Pashinyan (right) in a meeting a month or two after Azerbaijan took Nagorno-Karabakh.
- Never go to a second location.
- Always get the interior ministry post.
- Never get in a helicopter or any small aircraft.
- If someone with a gun enters your car, they’re gonna kill you.
- If someone tells you they’re not going to kill you, they’re calming you down to kill you later.
- Never give up your nukes.
- Never release the opposition's political prisoners.
- Never let the opposition delay elections.
- If someone starts to get into German runes, drop them.
- Never trust a South American with a German name.
- Never move anywhere for a religion.
- Never go into the sewers unless you’re a sewer guy.
- If someone’s trying to get you to commit a crime, they're FBI (sometimes CIA or military intelligence).
- Never become an FBI informant.
- If you do become an FBI informant, record everything.
- Never relinquish your arms.
- Always get it in writing.
- If you keep gambling, you’ll eventually win.
- Never talk to cops without a lawyer.
- Always pay your mercenaries.
- Don’t let anyone take your passport.
To add an addendum to rule 3, never put your President and Foreign Minister in the same helicopter or small aircraft. Especially if doing so in bad weather conditions. Especially if you're already under threat from a hostile nuclear power in the region with a proclivity for terrorism (though this probably isn't Israel's doing, in this particular case).
Anyway, Azerbaijan. Not a great country, I think. Did some genocides. They're a petrostate that is hosting Cop29, which I suppose is a way for the bourgeoisie to implicitly convey their contempt for the green movement. They got weapons from Israel, too.
Just for the record, there's an Iranian province called East Azerbaijan, which is not the same as Azerbaijan.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Azerbaijan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
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.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
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 Telegram Channels:
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.
In case you missed it Zelenskyy pushes allies for direct involvement in Ukraine’s war with Russia.
Some rather legitimately impossible demands from Zelenskyy in there:
He just asked for 130 fighter jets from NATO? What the actual hell! Ukraine only had 170 jets in 2014 before the war started. Does any NATO country except for the USA even have that many spare jets? Zelenskyy is asking for an entirely new air force to fight Russia, direct from NATO. He really sees NATO as Amazon Prime for arms shipments or something.
Did he just ask for European airforces to directly participate in the war? Is he out of his mind?! Of course NATO said you you clueless fool!
"just print more planes"
He has to realise how ridiculous he sounds at this point. The US and NATO keep having to tell him no, that's not how this works.
They gave them all they asked for for the summer offensive. Whenever they say "we wont send X" they end up caving and sending it. Do you think zelensky knows anything about production/stockpile numbers? He's on so much copeium that even if he did know the official numbers he'd convince himself "those are just the numbers they publish, daddy usa has 100x more than that in secret bunkers. They had to get something for the trillions of dollars they've spent on their military."
He's so zooted I bet he really does believe the west can send all that stuff and is choosing not to.
I mean NATO still has not given Ukraine fighter jets or very long range weapons and Ukraine has been asking for them for a while now. Then there was the summer offensive where NATO forced Ukraine to attack using combined arms tactics which require air support, while Ukraine had no air force. A lot of NATO trained elite Ukrainian units were essentially given an impossible mission by their NATO masters, to attack as if they have air support, when they did not. Remember the Bradley division that got destroyed? Which was a big issue, and NATO complained when Ukraine went back to conventional tactics. So I don't think NATO has given Ukraine everything that they have asked for, and for good reason in their eyes. They probably do not trust Ukraine not to escalate and directly attack Russia given all the rhetoric from Ukraine. Also it's probably not feasible for Ukraine to operate F-16s, as they require pristine runways. It's why there was such a big push to try get Ukraine Gripen fighter planes, as they can operate from makeshift roads and runways. NATO countries do not want to send 100 F-16 jets to the scrap heap after they get blown up by Russian missiles, like the Abrams tanks currently are being blown up now.
I'm talking about the expectations set in the formative years of zelensky's training and why he really doesn't "have to realise how ridiculous he sounds at this point."
He was trained to think that if he made enough of a stink he would get what he wanted. For zelensky the word "no" just means to beg harder and nato will cave. He thinks nato weapons shipments are like magic If he says the right incantation, with the right emotion, in the right setting, to the right people, the weapons will arrive. He keeps trying different configurations but the results have stopped working and he is incapable of understanding why. His most recent successful "Spell castings" he has said "I need 10" and he gets 5, so he thinks if he asks for 100 he will get 50 when the fact is what he asks for and what he gets are unrelated. He thinks he is haggling when in fact his words and desires are irrelevant.
I wonder if a lot of the 2nd generation post-soviet looters are actually surprised when they find out that value actually comes from labor and not from grifting? The first generation probably knew they were getting rich and participating in a once in a lifetime party. The second generation of fail children seems to have actually believed the anti-communist rhetoric.
He has to know there's no way any of this will happen, but he has to keep making demands so that after the loss he can blame western allies for not helping enough. Washington and Europe will blame the Ukrainians and inferior Slavic ways and etc., this is about establishing a counter-narrative.
It's a pretty bad counter narrative though. The narrative of "NATO refused to rebuild our entire Air Force for us at the flick of a switch while over 2 years into the war, so we lost" is not convincing
"for you"
Why is he begging for help shooting down missiles? I thought they were shooting down 90% on their own?
I find it so absurd that this guy can lie like "we've only lost 31k soldiers" and then expect that people will believe him when he says "we need x." Like a "friend" who is constantly bragging that they have a corvette and a porche but they both happen to be in the shop when they are begging for a ride to the weed dealer.
The Ghost of Kyiv is doing maintenance on his jet. That’s why Zelenskyy needs the west to pick up the slack
Mr Zalinko sir, I'm afraid we have slava'd our last ukraini. Good luck with your future endeavours.
The juxtaposition of Zelenskyy's mad demands, along with NATO constantly telling him no while they try to keep a united front despite all the infighting is pretty wild to see play out. Zelenskyy will ask for 300 fighter jets and a no fly zone next I guess.
If he decided to try and negotiate a peace agreement, how long before he gets got?
I mean he's been asking for a no fly zone since 2022 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60629175
They haven't recieved a single F-16 yet, and they're already asking for over 120 of them. I guess you miss all the shots that you don't take, but man is this an impossible longshot for Ukraine.
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France said they would if Zelensky asked directly, but that was a few weeks ago so who knows if he’ll actually do it.