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.
Phone of captured/dead Ukrop shows google searches for “Why isn’t javelin working” “javelin won’t shoot” “javelin making noises”
Critical support for Javelins that won't fire for Nazis.
Not everyone in the Ukrainian army is a Nazi. Most of them are forced to dive in the meat grinder and are not allowed to leave the country.
Which is why they should kill the fascist in their unit that's preventing them from surrendering, and then give themselves up asap
I always feel glad when i see footage of Ukrainian soldiers surrendering, well except for Azovstal then i was a bit :sicko-wistful:
The situation in Ukraine hadn't developed to the point where the fascists are de jure in power, and it's not as if this was a war in which the fascists were invading other countries - I suppose you could make an argument that the Donbass republics were kinda that, but it's not quite the same.
I agree that there are comparisons to be drawn here, and that the Ukrainians soldiers should start killing their officers and surrendering en masse (and on that second point, desertions seem to be increasing), but it's not quite the same as the soldiers in Nazi Germany, who knew full well that what they were fighting for was a fascist regime in offensive wars and oppressing minority populations and decided that they liked that, IMO. The fact that it can be convincingly presented as a defensive war against a foreign foe even captured the minds of some anarchists there, though we could argue back and forth as to what extent they're actually anarchists or whatever.
Once the Soviet monuments start getting torn down, the streets renamed to Bandera and Nazi collaborators, anyone paying attention in Ukraine knows what’s going on and who is in charge. Nazis from the Odessa burning and the Maidan were all promoted into high levels of government. Official Nazi battalions were smoothly integrated into the system and their officers promoted to military brass.
Zelenskyy was funded by the same oligarch who created Azov Battalion. He is the liberal face for the Nazi state. Ukraine is a de jure and de facto Nazi state.
They are fighting on behalf of a Nazi junta. You are doing clean Wehrmacht
The Ukrainian situation is quite different from the Wehrmacht thingy. This war is more or less, easily presentable as a defensive war while ww2 was an offensive war of extermination.
And in Ukraine, from what I know Nazis have a significant military and political presence but they're still not in complete control of the government. The Americans still maintain supreme control.
I'd rather blame the Ukrainian soldiers for fighting for Americans stonks rather than for a nazi junta.
American foreign policy is fascist. The Americans being de facto in control also makes Ukraine a fascist state.
Zelenskyy and the so called Ukrainian Liberals and moderates were funded by the creator of Azov.
It’s Nazis no matter how you slice it, and this was no defensive war.
A lot of Ukrainians don't have a choice. You have 17 year olds being conscripted, given less than a week's training, and then sent to the front. Once at the front they have the fascists embedded into their groups to make sure they don't try to surrender or desert. These kids then die pointlessly to Russian artillery in order to prop up a political illusion. These people are as much victims of the Kiev regime as the people of Donbas and I hope at least some of the Kiev government has to answer for these crimes.
They have a choice like any conscript does to go to jail or die. Many of the Wehrmacht were conscripts as well, you are repeating clean Wehrmacht arguments.
Don’t we make this argument with the Vietnam draft all the time? That anyone who didn’t dodge or desert or frag is at least somewhat accountable for the actions of the army they are in, and the state it represents? Are you saying that those who were drafted and served valiantly in Vietnam and are proud of their service aren’t imperialists? Because that’s the equivalent of defending the Ukrainian armed forces.
a 17 year old conscript with a week of training isn't going to be given a Javelin or a phone with internet access.
The regular forces of UA are all Nazis. Their commanders are Nazis. They have worked, ate, and slept beside Nazis for years.
You are right that the conscripts are not all Nazis... But do you think they hand Javelins to conscripts? Conscripts get 30 rounds for training before being shipped to the front. Do you think they let conscripts have phones with internet access? Not a chance. They would be posting videos of how they are being massacred and videos of being told they will be shot if they surrender or retreat.
A Ukrainian on the front line with a phone and a Javelin is a Nazi
They couldn't even be arsed to translate the manual to Ukrainian?
:data-laughing:
That’s just sad, proles killing proles for their porky masters, not even knowing what they are doing :sadness:
CBAed to doublecheck every point, anyway:
Libya under Gaddafi's 'dictatorship';
- Libya had no electricity bills, electricity was free for all its citizens.
- There was no interest rate on loans, banks were state-owned, and loans for citizens were 0% by law.
- Gaddafi promised that his parents would not get a house until everyone in Libya had one. Gaddafi's father died in a tent.
- All newlyweds in Libya received 60,000 dinars from the government for buying their own apartment and starting a family.
- Education and medical treatment in Libya were free. Before Gaddafi, only 25% of the population knew how to write, under his leadership - 83%.
- If the Libyans wanted to live on a farm, they received a free house, equipment, seeds & livestock.
- If you could not be treated in Libya, the government gave you treatment abroad & $2300 for accommodation and travel.
- If a Libyan bought a car, government funded 50% of the cost.
- Libya had no external debt, its reserves amounted to $150 billion.
- A mother who gave birth received $5,000. https://t.me/EurasianChoice/15115
Yes. But they didn't have rules-based librul democracy so therefore destroying all of those things by bombing them in order to give it to them was actually a good thing.
Exactly! We have to uphold the rules-based world order by BREAKING THE RULES of international law. I know it’s contradictory and to the average person’s eyes it’s morally repulsive, which is why takes guts to do it! And Obama did it! He made the tough choices! He knew bombing Libya wasn’t about politics!
Rules-based doesn't just mean any rule out there. It means the good rules, sensible, just and democratic rules, the kind of rules made in Washington.
I will never forgive the west for what they did to Libya :sadness-abysmal:
Probably mostly taken from this Parenti post https://i.imgur.com/Mn0FFrU.png
“We should have peace in Ukraine to help soothe the economy, but some people want to cynically extend the war for their own selfish gain.” YES! “These people are, of course, the Jews.” NO!
Tale as old as time.
Antisemitism is the Marxism of idiots.
They see that the world is fucked and that a tiny ghoulish cabal is profiting off the fuckery. So far so good. But instead of identifying said cabal by its relationship to the means of production, they make up a tall tale of that cabal being the Jews, or whatever dogwhistles like The Illuminati or the lizard people they insert to sound less like Nazis.
The comment sections on Russian telegram is fucking full of this shit
Also homophobic/transphobic :brainworms:
Patrick Lancaster has a interview with one of the interim government members of the city of Kherson and the guy is full of these brain worms. Near the end he says something about god and I realized they replaced a Nazi supporting government with a Fundamentalist Christian one.
Biden announces peace, Russia to join EU, NATO dissolved.
“Look Jack, sometimes you.. when your buddy and you, or you know… when corn pop came at me in that parking lot an an an I showed him my chain.. that’s how you make friends.”
I've gotta admit, when I'm scrolling through the sea of articles and I see an article by a mainstream source with a stupid title, it's like going out to a river and finding gold at the bottom of a pan, and depending on exactly what it is, I either audibly say "Oh my fucking god" (or when I read a really stupid line, like the "Does any other country even come close" line in that other article), or I break out into a huge grin.
D&C takes
And again, tobacco is not for the body, neither for the belly, and is not good for man, but is an herb for bruises and all sick cattle, to be used with judgment and skill.
D&C 89:8
How does tobacco help with sick cattle, like what the fuck Joseph
Who wouldn’t like to see Putin, the macho-man, Peter the Great-wannabe, turn into a weak and disheveled shell of his former self, holed up in the Kremlin with his tail between his legs?
Do these people have repressed castration fantasy/fetish or what … ?
Edit: no kink shame, though they should probably work it out on their own rather than bringing it unconsciously into their geopolitical drivel
It’s outrageous that oil and gas companies are able to take advantage and make four times the profits that they made when there wasn’t a war
Why?
Really, if you buy into a capitalist mode of production and the liberal ideology that defines its superstructure, those profits shouldn't upset you. This is literally what you believe in.
Allegedly, those obscene profits will encourage oil producers to increase production, until demand is met and the price goes back down again.
In liberal ideology, price gouging lowers costs. It's stupid but it's literally what they believe in.
Summary:
News:
Ukraine wants a new IMF deal. Mariupol's ex-mayor claims that there is a cholera and dysentry outbreak in Mariupol. The territory that Russia occupies in Ukraine is trying to sell grain to other countries, prompting accusation of Russia stealing Ukraine's grain. There's a new bridge on the Russia-China border, which shortens the distance Chinese goods need to travel. The Russian Foreign Ministry says that Zelensky is beginning to nag and pester and bite his foreign masters. Russia brings down their interest rates from 11% to 9.5%, which is probably not enough. Lavrov says that the West is breakdancing alone. The Netherlands faces obscene gasoline prices (nearly $10 per gallon unless I'm incompetent at math). There's a heatwave in Spain, bringing temperatures at or near 40 degrees Celsius. There will be a 3 day rail strike in the UK, which will cost the UK $125 million. Macron, after facing much criticism, says that he's actually unwilling to make any concessions to Russia and wants Ukraine to get its territory back. He also increased the number of homeless people in France, after promising he wouldn't do that. Italy starts picking up oil from Venezuela. Germany's officials start warning that the autumn and winter will be very difficult, though they continue to fill up their natural gas storage. The US and Germany dare Serbia to ditch Russian gas and to sanction Russia, and then call Serbia lame when it refuses.
Japan sets up a giant ocean turbine, which doesn't generate much power by itself but is one step towards harnessing Japan's tidal energy, which could potentially meet the country's energy needs if all of it is collected. The US tells India to stop buying so much Russian oil, as Moscow now has more money than before the war. At the same time, India is racing record power demand, which means there could be blackouts soon. Relations between India and Iran are generally improving, while Muslim countries are very pissed off at India for making derogatory comments about the Prophet Muhammad. Indonesia's citizens face high costs for food and energy.
The US proposes a new alliance against Iran called DEFEND, because fuck it, we need an alliance against every country we hate and they all need to have stupid names. Pakistan's textile industry is on the verge of collapse due to daily power cuts. Pakistan wisely responds to these hard times economically for its citizens by significantly increasing its military budget. Turkey's economy is kinda screwed, and Erdogan refuses to raise interest rates, instead focussing on reducing the number of dollars in deposit accounts and fixing Turkey's overreliance on imports. The US decides that they don't really give a shit about Khashoggi, and say that they'll forget about the whole affair if Saudi Arabia comes back to them. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia cuts some oil to China, though China continues to buy oil from Russia. Israel boasts about disabling the Damascus Airport.
The founder of an African think tank discusses the future of climate mitigation in Africa, discussing the crossroads of either investing in renewable energy or letting the West extract all the fossil fuels it possibly can from the continent. Algeria is no longer friends with Spain (and, probably, Russia is its new best friend). Tribal leaders in Libya blockade oil export terminals due to disputes in who should be the leader of Libya. Zimbabwe is being completely fucked over by the economic and food crises. Tanzania's government continues oppressing and shooting native peoples because they want to build a giant hunting ground for UAE royals.
The United States' inflation is not, in fact, at its peak. The average gas price goes above $5 for the first time, and Americans have never felt this bad about the economy. Energy prices go up by a third and Americans owe a total of $22 billion in late utility bills. It turns out landlords increasing rent was the single largest factor in May's inflation; perhaps the parliamentarian temporarily paused the Wage Price Spiral Incantation. Biden, who is supposed to be the most powerful person on the planet, politely asks that Exxon pays its taxes, and also asks if there's anything they can do to increase the amount of oil being refined. Texas' energy grid is being put under pressure due to rising temperatures and rising need for air conditioning. Drag queens dressed like Marilyn Monroe protesting climate hopefully confuse Biden. The Summit of the Americas starts off well, with police brutalizing protestors.
Military:
LPR claims that 400 Ukrainians are trapped in the Azot plant, as time is a flat circle. Ukrainian losses are pretty bad. Ukraine attempts another attack on the Kherson front. NATO says while they were being perfectly fair and law-abiding from 1997 to the present, NOW they're gonna start breaking the rules and building permanent NATO bases in eastern Europe. Spain wants to send some tanks to Ukraine, which will apparently do... something? to change the outcome of an artillery battle that Ukraine is losing badly. Lukashenko says that they might have to go in to western Ukraine if the West goes for it.
Climate:
Countries, shockingly, aren't following their climate pledges. Meanwhile, Antarctic glaciers are melting at the greatest rate in over 5000 years.
Dipshittery:
Putin's bodyguards apparently collect Putin's shit when he takes a dump on foreign visits so that other countries can't analyze it. Obama returns to comment on Ukraine, at the request of nobody. Zelensky thinks that time is on his side, as his soldiers are turned into a bloody goo. Putin wants to remake the Russian Empire, apparently, but also wants to remake the Soviet Union? I don't know. Orban blames George Soros for the world's misery.
Bloomer:
Forbes publishes an article suggesting that maybe, just maybe, dollar hegemony is why the world sucks so much. Jeanine Anez gets 10 years in jail, and Jacobin speculates if this is a real labor upsurge or if it'll be a temporary pulse of life before a massive corporate repression.
I haven’t had the constitution to pay attention for a month or so
What happened?
@Z_Poster365 is correct.
On the broader scale... a lot of shit has happened, so just as a stream of consciousness:
The EU instituted an oil embargo on Russian tankers (but not pipelines, as Hungary kept blocking it). However, it seems like there's some shady, undercover-y stuff going on which is keeping them on the seas. Meanwhile, India has taken in 8x as much oil from Russia as they did pre-war, and China is also filling up. Russia's oil production is definitely down, but not nearly as much as the West hoped, and oil prices have meant that oil revenues have largely kept Russia fine economically.
China is anxious about getting sanctioned because they have the biggest foreign reserves on the planet (something like $3 trillion) and really don't want that seized like Russia's reserves were seized. So a lot of their companies are temporarily pulling out, or operating more secretively, while China figures out how to solve that problem. Also, China's economy is slowly but surely waking up from the lockdown.
The weapons shipments into Ukraine are getting increasingly desperate. We've endured a couple months now of the West hyping up a weapon system, saying it's a game-changer; it entering Ukraine; then it turns out there were either too few of them to make a difference or they're just worse than Russian weaponry. The latest thing has been long-range missiles, but the ones the West are giving are actually about the same range as Ukraine's stuff because Putin threatened to do strikes on "places he hasn't yet struck" in Ukraine if missiles that could hit Russia are sent to Ukraine, and the West was cowed by that. I don't really know precisely what he meant, but I personally assume he meant he would strike decision-making centers that contain western analysts.
Aside from those wonderweapons, the stream of weaponry has slowed down, and getting more and more aged. The stuff they send sometimes doesn't even have the right ammo (or ammo at all). Germany seems like they're more-or-less out, promising weaponry that hasn't even been built yet. France just sent 6 (I repeat, 6) howitzers, in a war which is basically an artillery battle where Russia outmatches Ukraine 20 or even 40 to 1.
The Western world continues to suffer the results of their sanctions. The whole world, really. Food rises, energy prices, etc are up by quite a lot, everywhere. Just yesterday, there was an article about how UK healthcare workers are calling off work sick because it costs too much to buy the fuel to get them to work. The United States is among the most insulated from these changes, but it's still getting hit hard. Somewhat humorously, US economists keep going back and forth as to whether there will be a recession, whether inflation has peaked (it hasn't), but in Europe it's virtually certain that there will be a recession.
Meanwhile, the US is looking at a Summit of the Americas where they're missing several countries that were banned or refused to go because other countries were banned; a project in Asia in which they can't offer nearly enough to persuade the countries of Southeast Asia to side with them over China; Russia still has plenty of support in Africa and South America; Denmark and the Netherlands don't want Ukraine in the EU; and Turkey doesn't want Sweden and Finland in NATO. The hegemony is collapsing, slowly but surely. Meanwhile, countries like Argentina want to join BRICS, and Iran has proposed a potential new currency for countries in Central and East Asia to use rather than the dollar.
The other user is a doomer and is not telling you an accurate assessment but their own anti-Russia biased description.
Russia has taken Severodonetsk, they have taken Popasnaya, they are on the outskirts of Slavyansk and Lisychansk. LPR is 99% under Russian allied forces control. The new weapons shipped from the west have not proven effective, Ukraine has admitted losses of 200 deaths per day (more likely it’s much higher than that and that doesn’t include injuries and desertions and surrenders). Russia has a 10:1 ratio of POWs to Ukraine.
Russia’s deep strategic tactics and encirclement strategies are more similar to WW2, not WW1.
Ukraine is losing badly, the west is falling into doubt and recrimination. The collapse of the Ukrainian state is weeks or months away, they have already started giving Poland soft administrative control over western Ukraine.
kinda wish I had that problem. I can't keep my mind off of it, instead.
Nothing much, lots of people died on the frontlines, russia embraced advanced logic of ww1 “they’ll run out of soldiers sooner than we will”. Some signals that this is not working out great for ukraine, but no big decisive wins for russia.
Meh, I think current donetsk situation will resolve by autumn, question is will they go for more of ukraine.
It would be significantly harder diplomatically, but easier internally and militarily, when ukraine economy will suck even more, and morale wouldn’t be that well, especially after polish peacekeeping force. I don’t know which devil the average ukrainian will prefer, but eastern and southern ones would prolly like russia more than poland. If they go full tilt denazification by occupation, it would take years, but they don’t have desire to do so. All russian diplomatic effort seem to contradict it
300 tons is astonishingly low though, does it have supporting earth structures to funnel water? If no, they could build million of the fuckers over the years.
Solar panel number are just as deceptive with inverters/storage :soviet-hmm: wind is kinda limited in places, although japan should have a shitton of mountainous windy places :soviet-hmm: Do they work well with yearly typhoons?
Wind is kinda bleh due to fiberglass/blade retirement. Metal water turbines are easier to recycle, although seawater prolly wrecks them in different way and faster compared to freshwater dams.
I was just thinking that turbines weigh 500 tons by themselves, and giant dam weighs much more, so 300 tons didn’t seem too bad for the whole structure.
I think they extract them and service them by ships, or kinda exchange them, and move to shore to clean them up
Also, source of advanced shenanigans is current spain/morocco/algeria shit. Spain recognized morocco rights to west sahara, and now algeria is threatening to turn of gas to spain
To highlight two articles from the last couple days:
Ukraine is running out of ammunition as prospects dim on the battlefield WaPo
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The euphoria that accompanied Ukraine’s unforeseen early victories against bumbling Russian troops is fading as Moscow adapts its tactics, recovers its stride and asserts its overwhelming firepower against heavily outgunned Ukrainian forces.
Newly promised Western weapons systems are arriving, but too slowly and in insufficient quantities to prevent incremental but inexorable Russian gains in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, which is now the focus of the fight.
The Ukrainians are still fighting back, but they are running out of ammunition and suffering casualties at a far higher rate than in the initial stages of the war. Around 200 Ukrainian soldiers are now being killed every day, up from 100 late last month, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky told the BBC on Friday — meaning that as many as 1,000 Ukrainians are being taken out of the fight every day, including those who are injured.
The Russians are still making mistakes and are also losing men and equipment, albeit at a lesser rate than in the first months of the conflict. In one sign that they are suffering equipment shortages, they have been seen on videos posted on social media hauling hundreds of mothballed, Soviet-era T-62 tanks out of storage to be sent to Ukraine.
But the overall trajectory of the war has unmistakably shifted away from one of unexpectedly dismal Russian failures and tilted in favor of Russia as the demonstrably stronger force.
Ukrainian and U.S. hopes that the new supplies of Western weaponry would enable Ukraine to regain the initiative and eventually retake the estimated 20 percent of Ukrainian territory captured by Russia since its Feb. 24 invasion are starting to look premature, said Oleksandr V. Danylyuk, an adviser to the Ukrainian government on defense and intelligence issues.
“The strategies and tactics of the Russians are completely different right now. They are being much more successful,” he said. “They have more resources than us and they are not in a rush.”
“There’s much less space for optimism right now,” he added.
Ukrainian forces remain resolute. In a cafe in the front line town of Slovyansk, two Ukrainian soldiers on a break from the trenches nearby recounted how they were forced to retreat from the town of Dovhenke, northwest of Slovyansk, under withering Russian artillery fire. Thirty-five of their 100-strong unit were killed in the assault, typical of the tactics Russia is using. “They destroy everything and walk in,” said one of the soldiers, Vitaliy Martsyv, 41.
Ukraine’s high casualty rate could bring war to tipping point The Guardian
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Any way you count it, the figures are stark: Ukrainian casualties are running at a rate of somewhere between 6oo and 1,000 a day. One presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, told the Guardian this week it was 150 killed and 800 wounded daily; another, Mykhaylo Podolyak, told the BBC that 100 to 200 Ukrainian troops a day were being killed.
It represents an extraordinary loss of human life and capacity for the defenders, embroiled in a defence of the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk that this week turned into a losing battle. Yet the city was also arguably a place that Ukraine could have retreated from to the more defensible Lysychansk, across the Siverski Donets River, the sort of defensive situation that Ukraine has fared far better in.
The sheer number – more than 20,000 casualties a month – raises questions about what state Ukraine’s army will be in if the war drags on into the autumn. The same is true for the Russians too, of course. But the invaders already control large chunks of Ukraine, and they can pause the fighting with the territorial upper hand.
Consider the figures in context. Ukraine’s army was 125,000 strong, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and there were 102,000 national and border guards in addition. Analysts’ crude estimates suggest that since the start of the war the total could have doubled to an impressive 500,000.
Kyiv’s forces are far from a point of collapse. But several months of high casualties will erode its fighting strength significantly, even allowing for some of the wounded to recover. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s forces are already being pushed back in a Donbas artillery bombardment so intense it is likely to have a shell-shock impact on many of those who survive it. Morale is certainly an issue for the Russians, but there are now reports of desertions from the Ukrainian side too.
...
Western officials prefer not to discuss the impact of the war on the defenders, instead highlighting the problems for the Russians in their briefings. This week, one of those officials said their estimate was that the invaders had lost “15,000 to 20,000 dead”, out of an invasion force that was 150,000 or more. Yet despite this, Moscow’s army has still not lost its offensive capability.
But they chose not to provide similar estimates for Ukraine, which can create a lopsided impression that the Russians are faring worse. In fact, with an artillery overmatch of 10 or 15 to one, according to the Ukrainians, it may well be that the invaders’ casualty rate is far lower at the moment, because they are able to deal death from a greater distance to defenders who cannot see them.
Ammunition is certainly running short on the Ukrainian side, again by their own admission. Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, has said Ukraine is using 5,000 to 6,000 artillery rounds a day, and has “almost used up” its stockpile of Soviet 152mm standard shells. It is now relying on Nato-standard 155mm howitzers; it is unclear how many of these it has.
I know it's very bad of me to say this while so many people are dying, but I am reassured that the reality of the situation has always been what I believed it to be, even while all of the western media was saying otherwise. There are a lot of pithy quotes about how you need to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth or whatever the fuck, but I do kinda know what that feels like now.
The euphoria that accompanied Ukraine’s unforeseen early victories against bumbling Russian troops
Yes the early Ukrainian victories of... uh yes they had Kiev, Kherson, Kharkiv and Mariupol sieged and encircled right from the first week!
But that isn't success enough, by the second and third week the Kherson region was completely taken by the Russians, I mean couldn't how could Russia ever recover from that??!
Why even bother reading this piece of shit garbage anymore when this is the literal first line of the article, I have developed an irrational extreme violent tendency against western "journalists". Send these people to a gulag already.
I am reassured that the reality of the situation has always been what I believed it to be, even while all of the western media was saying otherwise. There are a lot of pithy quotes about how you need to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth or whatever the fuck, but I do kinda know what that feels like now.
This was never in doubt for me, I remember saying from the beginning to pay attention to what is happening on the ground and now what media is saying or even what politicians even Putin are promising.
People were skeptical that Putin wanted to denazify Ukraine, and my answer was "it doesn't matter, watch the result of the war and see if that is what happens" and it turned out the Azov battalion is pretty much completely destroyed. Obviously far from the goal but as Ukraine keeps losing troops the number of nazis is dropping.
“ I have developed an irrational extreme violent tendency against western “journalists”. Send these people to a gulag already.”
I'm from Buenos Aires, and I say kill 'em all
I'm a westoid and I don't think your tendency is the least bit irrational. These people are pure garbage.
I was truly wondering if I was nuts when I would hear people on NPR assuring me that any day now we would see the ghettos of Venezuela rise up and demand that the oil fields be privatized. It seemed unlikely, but I felt like a heretic for thinking it.
Lots of western leftists care very little about the third world. Sure, they would like to be magnanimous and give aid, but they have no functional analysis of imperialism and don't get how the imperial core enjoys the superprofits extracted from the periphery. They still very much see politics as stuff that happens within the confines of the nation state.
Also, the west have no real ecosystem of leftist media, academics and think tanks. There are islands of sanity in a few places, but most leftists in the west are part of liberal spaces and have their thinking dulled by the idealism that goes with it.
In the Ukraine war western leftists only see underdog Ukraine versus the big bad Russian bully. Western leftists share the fecklessness of many liberals and actively detests the notion of wielding power to affect change. Putin crossed a line by making war appear in the television which makes him a bad guy and the people he's against becomes good guys by virtue of fighting the bad guy. The stuff that went before with the fascist coup, the civil war in the Donbass, the western threats was all okay because it was not War On TV™.
