No update today, but your regularly scheduled programming will continue tomorrow.
Links and Stuff
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, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
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.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Yesterday's discussion post.
What do you base this on? I haven't seen any signs of this happening, quite contrary no westoid politician or journalist has been able to say "Crimea" since 2014 without prefixing it with "illegally annexed".
Crimea has been the go-to "Russia bad" story up until the war and has been used to justify everything from increased spending on armaments to energy policy to football.
The US empire has seen Russia as a rival since Soviet times and Crimea has been not only a perfect propaganda tool but also a justification for economic warfare and sanctions meant to weaken Russia to America's benefit. They had no reason whatsoever to give Russia a win in Crimea by recognising the will of the Crimean people.
The realpolitik of Crimea was written on the wall in 2014. There was never any serious international diplomatic effort for Ukraine taking back Crimea.
What Western politicians loved was the status quo pre-invasion of getting cheap Russian gas/oil and cheap Ukrainian labor by doing nothing.
Honestly the Realpolitik in Crimea was written on the wall in 1992. Crimea has tried to assert independence from Ukraine every 2-5 years since the end of the USSR and the only thing special about 2014 is the Kiev government was too weak to stop them.