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.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
    ·
    22 hours ago

    The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of North Korea wrote an article published on 10th of October.

    "A detestable criminal country that needs to be swept away in a day."

    Israel's genocidal campaign against Palestinians, which began in October last year, has continued year after year, and its means and methods have reached a point beyond human imagination, drawing the ire of the international community.

    According to Palestine's Wafa news agency, Israel's rogue regime, which has no regard for international law and humanitarian principles, recently shocked the world by devising a “bill” to restrict the activities of the UNRWA, with the aim of massacring innocent Palestinians once again.

    It is not enough that Israel has massacred more than 42,000 Palestinians and displaced more than 1.9 million Palestinians, more than 90% of the Palestinians in Gaza, in the past year since the outbreak of the Gaza crisis, but the Israeli criminal justice system's anti-humanitarian blockade of UNRWA, which is aimed at completely exterminating an entire people, is a heinous act of human rights abuses and a despicable war crime.

    The murderers, who are ruthlessly depriving people of their human rights, the most important of which is the right to survival, and plotting to cut off the last link of the refugees, and the unscrupulous human white elephants, who are toasting and laughing at the spectacle of bombing the inhabited areas of Gaza, are grossly violating humanity's right to survival and development by expanding the scope of mass destruction to neighboring countries.

    The international community is outraged that Israel, a dysfunctional country that ignores even the rudimentary notion of human rights and promotes extreme hateful ideas, and a country where criminals who take pleasure in human blood should never have existed on Earth in the first place.

    All justice- and peace-oriented nations and progressive movements must unite to firmly defend human justice, conscience, and world peace by decisively stopping Israel's criminal atrocities and expelling this cancerous cancer of human society from the face of the earth".

    • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      20 hours ago

      DPRK press releases never miss. The amount of sheer posting energy latent inside each one is off the charts. Whatever about the Great Firewall protecting the West—the collective firepower of just a few thousand North Korean posters unleashed upon the internet would be enough to eradicate the collective psyche of the West in like two months.

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
        ·
        18 hours ago

        I love how they have some real goddamn passion in them. Even when the US is describing its set of Bad Evil Countries, the way that US propaganda functions (at least partially) is constant repetition of a set of words or phrases, which are brainworms that burrow into the heads of people, influencing you at least somewhat even if you try and consciously reject it. "Full-scale invasion" or "unprovoked invasion" are two big ones that everybody here is familiar with and rolls their eyes at, as well as "rules-based international order".

        But these words and phrases are so bloodless and dispassionate. The words "detestable" and "murderers" is so much better than "authoritarian" and "regime". The phrase "a country where criminals take pleasure in human blood" feels like a human wrote it, compared to whatever bland quasi-AI description the US trots out about Hamas or Hezbollah. The DPRK saying that "Joe Biden is a rabid dog who must be beaten to death with a stick" has real emotion behind it, unlike the stupid fucking "Putin is just like Voldemort and NATO is Dumbledore's Army!!1!" sludge that the West pipes out

    • wombat [none/use name]
      ·
      21 hours ago

      uncritical support for the DPRK in its heroic struggle to liberate occupied Korea from the genocidal American empire

      • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
        ·
        21 hours ago

        http://www.mfa.gov.kp/view/article/21382

        Found this article from a different date, October 25 and it appears to resemble the text when translated

        A disgusting criminal state that must be wiped out as soon as possible.

        Israel's atrocity of mass murder against the Palestinian people, which began in October of last year, has continued over the years, and its means and methods have reached a point beyond human imagination, arousing the anger of the international community.

        According to the Palestinian news agency "Wafa", Israel's rogue regime, which does not care about any international law or humanitarian principles, recently once again passed a "bill" restricting the activities of the United Nations Refugee Relief Organization in Palestine with the purpose of mass murder of innocent Palestinian residents. It is said that he shocked the world by inventing this.

        After the outbreak of the Gaza crisis, they massacred as many as 42,000 Palestinians over the past year and reduced more than 1.9 million people, or more than 90% of the Palestinians in the Gaza zone, to refugees. As a result, the UN Organization for Refugee Relief in Palestine was accused of being a terrorist organization. The anti-humanitarian blockade of the Israeli criminals who blocked the activities of the Israelites completely destroyed an entire nation. This is a heinous act of human rights annihilation aimed at annihilating people, and it is a shameful war crime.

        Murderers who ruthlessly take away human rights, the most important of which is the right to life, and cut off the refugees' last line of life. Shameless human butchers who toast and laugh at the sight of the explosion of residential areas in the Gaza Zone. The group is now expanding the scope of mass killings to neighboring countries, severely violating humanity's right to survival and development.

        The international community is outraged that Israel, a country with a broken thinking function that ignores even the most basic concepts of human rights and promotes only extreme human hatred, and is full of criminals who take pleasure in seeing human blood, should never have been created on earth in the first place.

        All countries that pursue justice and peace and progressive humanity will unite to resolutely stop Israel's criminal atrocities and resolutely expel this criminal state, which is a dark enemy of human society, from the face of the earth, thereby securing justice and conscience for humanity and world peace. We must firmly protect it. (End)