back in my map era, we're ukrainemaxxing right now
Declarations of the imminent doom of Ukraine are a news megathread specialty, and this is not what I am doing here - mostly because I'm convinced that whenever we do so, the war extends another three months to spite us. Ukraine has been in an essentially apocalyptic crisis for over a year now after the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive, unable to make any substantial progress and resigned to merely being a persistent nuisance (and arms market!) as NATO fights to the last Ukrainian. In this context, predicting a terminal point is difficult, as things seem to always be going so badly that it's hard to understand how and why they fight on. In every way, Ukraine is a truly shattered country, barely held together by the sheer combined force of Western hegemony. And that hegemony is weakening.
I therefore won't be giving any predictions of a timeframe for a Ukrainian defeat, but the coming presidency of Trump is a big question mark for the conflict. Trump has talked about how he wishes for the war to end and for a deal to be made with Putin, but Trump also tends to change his mind on an issue at least three or four times before actually making a decision, simply adopting the position of who talked to him last. And, of course, his ability to end the war might be curtailed by a military-industrial complex (and various intelligence agencies) that want to keep the money flowing.
The alignment of the US election with the accelerating rate of Russian gains is pretty interesting, with talk of both escalation and de-escalation coinciding - the former from Biden, and the latter from Trump. Russia very recently performed perhaps the single largest aerial attack of Ukraine of the entire war, striking targets across the whole country with missiles and drones from various platforms. In response, the US is talking about allowing Ukraine to hit long-range targets in Russia (but the strategic value of this, at this point, seems pretty minimal).
Additionally, Russia has made genuine progress in terms of land acquisition. We aren't talking about endless and meaningless battles over empty fields anymore. Some of the big Ukrainian strongholds that we've been spending the last couple years speculating over - Chasiv Yar, Kupiansk, Orikhiv - are now being approached and entered by Russian forces. The map is actually changing now, though it's hard to tell as Ukraine is so goddamn big.
Attrition has finally paid off for Russia. An entire generation of Ukrainians has been fed into the meat grinder. Recovery will take, at minimum, decades - more realistically, the country might be permanently ruined, until that global communist revolution comes around at least. And they could have just made a fucking deal a month into the war.
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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 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.
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.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
It was so fucking easy for Dems to pin everything on Likud and Bibi. I still can’t fathom how they were unable to make the simple separation between their Zionist tendencies and how Bibi has actively worked against the democrats for 2 decades. The Dems literally have to be blackmailed by Mossad or they are truly the most incompetent political party in history. This was an uncontested layup.
It’s very likely that it’s both.
I hate this line of thought. Dems were not fooled or blackmailed or "controlled" they just are ideologically committed to empire.
They are blackmailed, what do you think the purpose of Mossad’s Epstein ring was?
Democrats would rather lose, blame their base, and move to the right than acknowledging that antiwar movement still has any semblance of power.
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Supporting Bibi and Likud is against the self interest of the democrats getting elected at home. Placing all the blame on Bibi would’ve removed so much tension within the electorate and with foreign allies. Bibi is legit everything Dems say Putin is, the level of support Likud gave the republicans might actually have swung this past election. I understand they are zionists, but there has to be some level of self interest when it comes to winning elections.
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It’s not conspiracy theories, Epstein worked for Mossad and blackmailed prominent American politicians and celebrities. That’s fact. You think that all ended when one person got arrested?
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Lmao. Epstein is not an organic billionaire. He was a nobody until he was given a billion dollars. That is not normal. This is not a normal rich person controlling others, he was given money because he is an agent of a greater force. Both Gislaine and Epstein have tons of overt and explicitly documented ties to Mossad, including familial. You honestly are a credulous lib if you don't see what's going on here.
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If this same thing was going on with CIA related personnel you would believe it easily because it fits into well documented patterns of how they operate. But you have Jewish Exceptionalism driven into your brain where any conspiratorial act by Israel has to be ignored lest you be considered “anti-Semitic” for noticing reality.
I’m not going to say more but if you don’t believe Epstein was part of a large scale governmental pedophile ring with Mossad ties I don’t think you are being honest. The whole world saw it and knew and you are doing revisionist history to obscure it into irrelevancy when we saw a peak behind the curtain of ruling class discipline methods.
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The amount of people who believe Epstein is part of a larger blackmail ring is like tenfold the amount of people who are communists. I don’t sound crazy, the vast majority of people agree with me already because it’s by far the simplest explanation of his case when you look into the details.
Out of my immediate circle of peers I can think of, only one of them is a commie but literally 100% of the others believe Epstein didn’t kill himself and the US government covered something up.
It’s more of a “conspiracy” that he killed himself and was a lone wolf without any state backing, in that it’s more absurd to believe