Here is September 5th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is September 6th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is September 7th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
No updates on Thursdays.
Here is September 9th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is September 10th's update!
A few improvements:
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I'm gonna try and include more images, now that I've figured out how to do it on my end without things getting confusing. Namely, I now have a whole folder on my computer dedicated to this stuff where I can put things. A truly incredible development. However, a lot of the articles don't have images, and if they do, they aren't all that noteworthy - think "typical stock image of an oil barrel or a dude looking frazzled at a stock market screen". But still, there's usually at least 1 or 2 images that I can and should put in every day for added pizazz.
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I'm actually using the tagging system, instead of it just being "ukraine" and "russia" the whole time, and will be slowly working on adding them for the previous updates too. Eventually, you will be able to search by country throughout the whole update list, from the ever-present "china" or "united states" to the very rare "uzbekistan".
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More consistent climate and space updates. Hopefully.
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100% more love for our trans comrades.
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Adding what you people post in these megathreads to the summaries too. The tyranny of only referring to my own work without talking about anything of the comments you guys make shall end.
On that note: do you have a lot of knowledge about the current state of a particular country (beyond mindless electorialism)? Do you, for some reason, have a lot of knowledge about hydrogen power, or the fossil fuel industry, or renewables, or rare earth mining, or have you delved into a wikipedia rabbithole on a topic and became a semi-expert? Hell, are you an actual expert? If the answer to any of the above is yes, please comment more! There are like 200 countries on this planet and I realistically only have time to talk about a fraction of them on a given day, and of that fraction, only a single article. I may have a vibe about certain countries, but if you wanna rant about the current situation in X country or how neoliberalism is ruining Y country, but you think "nah, who gives a shit" - I give a shit. Some of the best content in these megathreads is people being like "The general media narrative around what's happening in this country is wrong, here's what's actually going on here."
I'll even quote your username in the summaries if you do it. It's a meritocratic version of the general megathread's username list that they do every time. The thrill of a purple number next to the bell in the upper right corner of your screen can be yours for the low low price of a microessay for our reading pleasure.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists, for the "buh Zeleski is a jew?!?!" people.
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.
Get your copium detectors ready and make your decision:
Statement by the commander of the Akhmat regiment, Apty Alaudinov:
To be fair, this is a good point: with all the drones flying around, intelligence gathering, satellites, all that - it seems very unlikely that Ukraine's forces can really hide anywhere, especially when they concentrate prior to an offensive. So I will concede that Russia knew what was about to happen. I guess it's just "Is this a galaxybrained weak center strong sides play to vaporize all your enemy's military equipment in a cauldron they themselves created, or did they not think Ukraine would get that far?"
And if you're gonna have Ukraine break through your lines, this exact place seems like the best place to do it given the ease of resupply. If this happened near Zaporozhye then I could imagine it being a massive pain in the ass.
A lot of Russian reserves have been moved overnight to the Kharkov front. The situation there is messy, as far as I can tell. The bleeding has been stopped, at least for a little while, and Kupyansk and the surrounding area remains under firm Russia control. Whatever is going on in Balakleya is unclear.
looking around on the other pro-Russian sites, like MoA and Saker - while the people there are generally confident that Russia will win regardless of individual setbacks (as am I) it is pretty interesting how many all-is-losters there are on our side of the conflict. I'm honestly not sure why.
I guess if you're pro-Ukraine, by now the people who look at Russian advances and go "all is lost!" have all had nervous breakdowns or been silenced out of the narrative. Whereas Russia has had a relatively unblemished record of victory and advance up until this point, so Ukrainian counteroffensives look like great big pivotal points instead of acts of desperation.
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I believe that any Ukrainian military breakthroughs are, on the geopolitical scale, insignificant, and the set of dominoes (Balakliya! Kupyansk! Izyum!!) typically envisioned in a for-the-want-of-a-nail-the-kingdom-was-lost way is just anxious energy being dispelled.
Even if the worst case scenario happens, I still think Russia is physically unable to lose this war - my reasoning being that Ukraine and the West is pouring all their materials and energy into this, while Russia hasn't even gotten close to fully mobilizing its army, so if there was ever a risk of a mass breakdown of the Russian forces, they would just send more guys and equipment in.
To be more precise, Russia has the choice as to whether they want to win or lose this war. It may well be that for Putin, this all comes down to "Do I send in all my forces to Ukraine and risk public pressure that could eventually result in unpleasant social conditions, or do I not do that and allow Ukraine to take back some territory?" Only for Ukraine is this war existential and thus anything is justified, in their view, to overcome Russia; Russia does not face that same conundrum, so eventually resource expenditure may become too much to be worth it - or maybe it doesn't, and this war goes on for years.
I mean the US was physically unable to lose the Vietnam war. In the sense that with both sides fighting to the last men, the last Vietnamese guy would have dropped long before the last American.
The Russians at Balakliya didn't seem to axious to risk their lifes for the greater glory of the motherland. Forcing more recrutes in with an mobilisation might end up in an armed rebellion. It's pretty much the only way for Russia to lose any war like they did in 1905 and 1917.
That being said I still think the Ukrainian successes are blown out of proportion and stand by the point that both sides are incabable of meaningfull advances. Either there is a state bankrupcy in Ukraine with them not being able to pay their soldiers anymore or Russian morale collapses or this will drag on for years.
For me, outcome depends on how many troops Russia can rotate to Kharkov ultimately. I've seen reports from Ukraine side that Ukraine has lost a staggering 5000 men in the 3 day counteroffensive, but they're using about 50k men in this operation. If Russia can match this number, they'll probably hold and reclaim the lost territory. It seems that this is do or die for Ukraine and if they fail to make gains in Kupyansk or Izyum, the sheer personnel loss might spell the end of their resistance in the northern part of the country.
Interesting to note that they lost this much while saying that they outnumbered the Russian garrison 10 to 1.
100% agreed. Ukraine needs to win these counteroffensives, Russia just has to not lose for long enough to disable Ukraine's military sufficiently.
Though I am hoping that eventually Russia will start actively marching forwards soon to take advantage of lulls in strength. I'm seeing a lot of talk about foreign mercenaries involved on Ukraine's side, which to me just seems like it's various NATO forces sending their troops in but in an unofficial way and in small numbers. That, plus the United States' commitment to Ukraine seems unbreakable and the military shipments in won't stop for years, even if Europe is largely down and out. I am beginning to see how this current situation could simply go on and on, years down the line, because Russia has only committed a fraction of its strength to the war and it seems to be enough people to be physically unable to lose, but not enough to really ever truly win. I suppose Putin must see this as beneficial or at least acceptable or he'd commit more troops.
Let us be honest though, Russia had the upper hand from the very beginning, despite the west claiming the Russian army is inferior.
So the outcome up to now was entirely predictable. This isn't favoritism but the material reality of the war. Even historical facts like Russia inheriting the majority of the USSR army seems to be completely ignored e.g claims that they were running out of ammo despite the USSR being ready for WW3 for close to 50 years.
Going forward I need to see some very fundamental changes to the bigger operational level before Ukraine becomes a credible force.
The western wonder toys are simply that, barely functioning toys, we all remember the narrative so no need to go over it again, from TB-2s to Javelins, Leopards and HIMARS, but the point is nothing realy changed since like April.
In the grand scheme of things the damage is already done, Russia could lose the entire Donbas front next week and it wouldn't change much, the war would go on because surely the Russians are not about to go back living under Ukrainian nazis.
But also people should remind the basic premise of the war was Ukraine joining NATO. They will not accept any form of defeat as that would put them worse than before.
They may trade territory back and forth but this isn't the point, pro-Ukrainians want to frame it that way and make people forget the NATO issue isn't going away without a substantial Russian victory or some unthinkable(at this point) Ukrainian peace deal. Going back to the beginning, as I said something needs to change on a very fundamental level and I don't know how that is likely.
This is how I feel about the current Ukrainian offensives.
This is all Ukraine has left. All the troops trained out of country, all the foreign weapons they've been stockpiling, its all in this push. Russia was expecting some break throughs and probably chose them to a certain extent but there wont be much left after this. Russia is rolling with the punches as best they can because they know they have the match in the bag and this is Ukraine's last gasp.
In addition to the troops that entered overnight, as of a few minutes ago, I'm seeing reports of more Russian troops being transferred to Kharkov.
EDIT: Pretty large convoy moving to reinforce Izyum.