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.
My fucking god, Russia experiences a setback for the first time in this whole war and suddenly the entire war is lost. Calm down. The redditors are not "right", no matter how much you "hate" to say it.
Have you noticed that Ukraine's gains are deep, but narrow?
Have you noticed that they're paying with their lives to acquire this territory?
What we know is that the Russians have retreated out of Kupyansk to the east. The losses for Russia are mostly territorial, and not in personnel - the former can be retaken, the latter cannot be easily rebuilt.
Quite frankly, if this is what the best of the best of Ukraine can achieve, I'm feeling pretty confident in overall Russian victory before too long. Let them tunnel all the way through Russia's held territory to fucking Moscow if they want - their losses will be worth it for Russia.
Russia's assigned force to Ukraine is smaller than Ukraine's army. Therefore they must retreat instead of doing desperate last stands all over the map. It's either lose the land, or lose the men and the land.
Russia's goal is to minimize their own casualties, not gain territory - that was true back in the artillery bombardment phase, and is still true now.
I agree with your main points, but think of what this defeat means for the Russian population of Izyum, Liman and other captured settlements. Russia promised them safety and the freedom to be openly Russian for the first time in 8 years. Many of them became extra invested in those promises and acquired Russian passports recently. All these people have now been abandoned to the unknown, who knows what the AFU will do know. This is not the withdrawal from Kiev and Sumy, this represents something much bigger and more dangerous for the Russian project in Eastern and Southern Ukraine. Imagine what's going through the minds of Russian people in Berdyansk, Lysychansk and Kherson now.
There are already reports of Ukrainians hunting "traitors" in the newly-occupied areas. It is going to be a rule of terror until they are liberated again.
Now this I agree with: yes, it'll be interesting (and almost certainly horrifying) to see what happens now that Russia has proven that it cannot always protect the citizens that it has "liberated". It probably won't override the last 8 years of suffering that the DPR and LPR have gone through, but in Kherson, and Zaporozhye? There might be more than a few people who were on the fence who are now not on that fence anymore.
From what I've seen, Russians still control the eastern side of Kupyansk over the river. From the sources I follow, I haven't seen reports of Izyum actually falling. All I know is that there's some fighting going on a few km from Izyum and on the outskirts of Lyman. Lyman reportedly being shelled, but troops there still holding. We'll see if the reserves transferred yesterday are enough to hold the town.
EDIT: OK, now I'm seeing some reports that Russia is leaving Izyum. FURTHER EDIT: Conflicting reports going on. Another source says Izyum has not been abandoned.
Lots of contradictory reports all over the place.
I expect that the next few days - and likely the week after - will be bad news for Russia territorially speaking. They seem to be doing all they can to minimize their own casualties.
This place isn't the only one overran with all-is-losters. MoA, Saker, you name it, lots of people panicking (and more than a few pro-Ukraine trolls egging them on).
To everybody here:
Let's not also devolve into that, it'll be hell to deal with. No copium for Russia, but also not Ukraine. No "well, it looks like this single offensive has nullified the last six months and actually Russia is trash and shit and terrible and it was all luck and Ukraine is all powerful and Max Boot was right and the Redditors are owning us and laughing at us and--". let's keep things under control and expectations for both sides reasonable.
Some factors showing in advantage of Russia despite the recent Ukrainian successes: