It's my weekly rest day, so no update today.
I just want to thank everybody who has engaged with these threads, from the frequent commenters, to the background lurkers, and even the people who come in thinking this is the main megathread and start telling us about their banana bread recipe or something like that.
I'm hopeful that my daily schedule will stabilise for at least the next few weeks, if not months, and I can finally get a reliable stream of updates rather than those punctuated by random breaks.
Of course, may the war end soon, and may Azov, Right Sector, and every other group get what they deserve. And, of course, these threads will continue past the end of the war - unless the end of the war coincides with a sudden and brief increase in the air temperature to several million degrees in every city on the planet.
Yesterday marked the 72nd day of me doing this. I'm gunning for 72 trillion more.
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ ASB Military News, banned from Twitter.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster - crowd-funded U.S journalist, mostly pro-Russian, works on the ground near warzones to report news and talk to locals.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it's a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
With the entire western media sphere being overwhelming pro-Ukraine already, you shouldn't really need more, but:
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.
Yesterday's discussion post.
Many NATO members have historical tensions, Turkey-Greece, Macedonia-Greece, France-Turkey and they have worked at cross-purposes historically. Sure, NATO lasted for 30 years post USSR but it wasn't like they were just coasting and would've sailed for another 30 - they were actively trying to find another paradigm to get the alliance to go on. Bosnia, Afghanistan, anti-piracy off the coast of the horn of Africa, Libya etc. And that definitely worked for about a decade and a half but the NATO-as-human-rights paradigm was starting to shudder.
It didn't help that NATOs mission in Afghanistan was failing for 2 decades before finally ending in utter failure and the other missions they went on weren't exactly winners either. Trump and that section of the GOP was doing their best to bust up diplomatic relations (for their own and the other national bourgeoisie set's interests over the international bourgeoisie), who knows how that could've turned out absent a Ukraine conflict because Biden has also continued some of those Trump geopolitical choices too. They've been searching for the "pivot to Asia" since at least Obama but NATO's existence always sucked away some of their capacity to shift the imperial war machine out of Europe (because the academic types that run foreign policy have recognized America's decline in capacity to do both at the same time).
Not saying the West would've played nice in Eastern Europe though, lol. It just wouldn't have been NATO, would've been a German led EU style response as America withdrew from Europe. Russia's intervention gives a plausible reason for NATO to continue and for member states to choose to stay in and refocus that's better than the now very worn out "global human rights police" that's been failing.
Honestly, that could explain why the US was so determined to instigate war with Russia - NATO was becoming a relic so there is motive to manufacture a war that justifies its prolonged existence/maintenance.
Whether ultimately Russia or US is more responsible for the war (for the sake of argument) I don't think there is any timeline where the US lets their NATO institution collapse without a fight - which lines up with Hudson's analysis: this war is just as much about re-asserting US leadership in Europe as it is about combating Russia.