Here is July 18th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is July 19th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Apologies fellas, the mixture of the heat and work has really exhausted me over the last day or two, so I think I will take a break day today and get rested up for the next three days of updates.
Here is July 21st's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is July 22nd's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is July 23rd's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
No updates on Sundays.
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.
Last week's discussion post.
Summary
News
EU tankers, particularly Greek ones, are racing to transport as much Russian oil as possible for those juicy profits before the sanctions kick in, sometimes going as far as Siberia. The EU's crop yield is projected to fall, which will presumably cause von der Leyen to start denouncing Mother Nature for weaponizing food exports. Putin is going to go meet and make friends with Erdogan in Turkey and Raisi in Iran. An economic adviser to Putin says that the Russian economy will be firmly back on the tracks towards positive developments by the end of this year. The UK's military chief says that people speculating that Putin has turbocancer because his leg twitched once is copium, and that he probably won't be assassinated. Lavrov accuses France and Germany of killing both Minsk agreements (which, oddly, neither of which are mentioned much in western media when they describe the escalation up to February 24th). The UK labor shortages may cost their economy $35 billion per year. It's really fucking hot in the UK, as I am experiencing firsthand, with the heatwaves easily set to break records. France is also really fucking hot, and also Europe is on fire. Germany says that this conflict could speed up their green energy transition, like a procrastinator writing their essay the day before the due date in a panic-fueled haze, as I'm sure we all know about. Draghi escapes Italy to go hang out in Algeria for, uh, gas talks - yeah, that's it.
Boeing cuts its long term industry forecast after excluding sales from Russia and Central Asia. China is moving away from skyscrapers because they're not good, and instead wants more low-rise buildings. It's also really fucking hot in China. The DPRK says that their coronavirus outbreak is almost over, claiming that over 99% of its 4.77 million fever patients since late April have fully recovered, proving the effectiveness of Juche magic.
Imran Khan has called again for an early national election after his party took the majority of positions in Punjab, the most populous province in Pakistan. Iran's exports to the EU are up 39% in 5 months, year on year. Iran says that it could build a nuclear bomb if it wanted to, saying that it's uranium is at 60% enrichment and that they could get to 90% easily. Oil prices have risen above $100 per barrel as Biden failed to get anything from Saudi Arabia.
Morocco's oases are drying up.
Bernie says that Biden shouldn't be talking to autocracies like Saudi Arabia, which is a whataboutism or something, idk. Yellen wants the US to end dependence on China for rare earth metals, solar panels, and other goods - which sucks for them, I guess.
Panama is now past week two of their national strike, and is keeping on going. Venezuelan top secret agents want to establish a cyber intelligence operations base in Argentina, which sounds cool as fuck but the WSJ thinks that's bad or something.
Conflict and Climate
A Pentagon supplier says that the West can't sustain a prolonged conflict in Ukraine or elsewhere, which is probably just them grifting for more money from the government but also, I think, has a kernel of truth if we're talking about most countries that the US would want to invade, given the track record of US gear so far in Ukraine. Zelensky fires some of his admin staff, citing treason - hopefully he's overthrown soon and this war can end. Italy may soon be unable to arm Ukraine due to the political instability with Draghi and so on.
Dipshittery, Good Takes, Hope, and Extra
Business Insider says that Russia has now killed any dream that Moscow could become an international finance hub (which I think strongly depends on your definition of "international", which I think differs from BI's). WSJ and Fortune release largely the same article, arguing that, sure, the West is facing some consequences from the sanctions and some people may freeze and jobs may be loss en masse as industries collapse, but Russia doesn't have Western brands anymore, so really, they're doing a lot worse here. An ex-NATO commander says that Russia's war in Ukraine will likely become a frozen conflict in 4-6 months due to strong Ukrainian resistance, saying that Russia has gained "a little bit of territory over what he started the conflict with", referring to an occupied area nearly half the size of Germany. John Bolton steals a bit from us, saying that the foreign coups he helped plan were necessary to 'protect America's best interests'. Forbes argues that the US simply can't do anything to curb the world's CO2 emissions, which I go on a multi-paragraph rant about.
An author for Popular Resistance, who previously described how the UK played a role in the coup that ousted Morales, interviews Evo. Tony Blair says that the West's dominance is ending and China is rising (which is a good take, but he's still going to prison when the revolution comes). Argentina and Mexico are increasing commercial ties with Cuba, while Caribbean states call for the lifting of sanctions against Venezuela.
There's cute photos of wild elephants on the Chinese-Laos border.
Inject the summaries into my veins this is better than the pod