No update today.
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.
Hope the machine translation (from Russian -https://t.me/sashakots/33179) won't slaughter this, I'm too tired from job today (on damn Sunday!) to translate manually:
Representatives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are conducting secret negotiations with the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on the burial of their dead. And about surrender. The negotiations were successful. Group "O" says:
“I will not repeat that this has already become the norm for the Kyiv regime and they act on the principle: “no bodies to bury = no problem” (= no money for their families). I want to talk about something else here.
I tried to write this post for a long time, something kept stopping me. Probably did not want one of its participants to repeat the fate of Sergei Lapko (a company commander who received a term for showing the plight of the Armed Forces of Ukraine).
So, after the liberation of another settlement from the Nazis in the Donetsk region, we went to the enemy command (fortunately, intelligence works well and their call signs with the frequencies on which they work are well known to us) and offered them to pick up the bodies of their dead comrades, naturally with a complete cessation fire from our side and unhindered passage of the car to the designated place.
After some conversations, they received a categorical refusal and a request not to disturb them anymore on this topic (this is a polite way to put it, there was actually a long stream of obscene expressions). Toward evening they were all buried. (I don’t attach a photo, I’ll explain further).
In the middle of that night they come to me on the radio from the checkpoint and ask me to urgently arrive. Understanding nothing, I am confused, I leave for the post. On the spot, they tell me that a fighter came from the other side, calls your call sign, said he will only talk to you. I go into the room, a young guy is sitting, the uniform is dirty, shabby. Showed documents. And he began to say: “I am the commander of a platoon of those boys whose bodies you proposed to take today, I couldn’t get on the radio with you, they would immediately undertake steps. Bury my soldiers, please, and tell me where, I will pass on the location to their relatives. The command flatly refuses to inform the families about the dead and wounded, so as not to cause panic among the relatives. We are now being drafted only because otherwise we will go to jail, and we can’t even retreat - there are cadres or nationalists behind us, we would get a bullet in the back from them.”
He told how they were prepared in training before being sent to the front: "For two weeks we studied the charters, 30 bullets for training in shooting and on the road we go." All his words were confirmed by photographs. He says: "Fortunately, phones are not taken away, we record everything."
They talked for a long time, spoke about the mood in the units: "everything is sad, everyone is afraid, and those who are in front and those who are behind." But he came not only with this request. "My main task," he continued, "is to save the lives of my fighters. Tell me how we can surrender. We don't want to fight for the oligarchs who are sitting abroad and our corrupt government! Why is surrender possible for Azov, but not for us?"
After receiving all the instructions, he left, left with the hope that his remaining subordinates would remain alive. A day later, after the start of the assault on the next settlement, the platoon of this commander surrendered in full force, as he promised. Now their lives are not in danger.
Summing up, I want to ask only one question. When will the population of Ukraine realize that their president, a drug addict and that child-lover Arestovich, does not care about the lives of the citizens of his country!? They calmly surrendered the Azov in Mariupol, declaring that this was an evacuation, and they will continue to do so. Until the last Ukrainian... PS I wanted to be brief, but it didn’t quite work out.”
If this is at all extrapolatable to the wider Ukrainian forces - and who can truly say either way, though it makes sense to me that morale would be bad for Ukraine - it really adds a disturbing edge to the oft-repeated "strong resistance" of the Ukrainian troops. While the media lauds their bravery and toughness against the oncoming Russians, in reality, they have a gun jammed into the back of their heads at all times. They have no choice to be a "strong resistance" if they don't want to end up needlessly killed by neo-Nazi bullets.
Many wars are hostage situations for the working class who fight them for their bourgeoisie, but this one really takes that concept to a whole new level. At least if Russia was being particularly brutal with them or their POWs or the civilians of Ukraine then there might be a solid reason why the command thought they mustn't give an inch of ground, but they're being a lot more careful with them than most other armies, though of course not perfect.
It is a morbid, monstrous plan to slowly turn tens of thousands of young, innocent folks to corpses, buying more time as ordered from Washington. In front of our eyes, sometimes virtually recorded.
It's similar to pointless mass murder of Japanese soldiers [by their own government] in WW2 which was lost years before the first nuke dropped, and Hirohito & his men even waited till the second one; in case anyone wonders "when will it stop?".