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.
Russian attacks on the Ukrainian power grid is a serious escalation of the conflict. Until now the Russian government has been hesitant to hit civilian targets, maybe not to damage it's international reputation too much, maybe to make the campaign to win hearts and minds in the liberated areas easier.
This is over now. Ukrainian civilians will face immense hardship for a very long time because of this. The Ukrainian economy will suffer immensely and many civilians are going to die. It will take a very long time to rebuild those power stations, especially under the current economic situation. It will take years to rebuild those power plants. Europe might be able to supply some power to the Ukraine once they manage to patch up some of the lines but Europe is already in the middle of an energy crisis and is low on power for its own industry.
The attacks has an obvious military rationality, everything is going to be harder for Ukrainian militants now, but the attack is also a terrorist attack in the sense that it is going to strike fear in the hearts of civilians and cause massive disruption to civil society which in turn is going to demoralise the Ukrainian side, depleting their will to continue fighting.
I do wonder if this was always planned or if Russia's generals looked at the the Kharkiv counteroffensive in particular and got off their lounging chairs and were like "Okay, now it's time to get serious."
Maybe now isn't the best time to say it now that hundreds of thousands (maybe even millions or more if the strikes escalate) of people are going to be in intense hardship especially over the next 6 months, but it almost can't be overstated just how lenient and kind Russia has been to the civilian population of Ukraine. Like, why should your enemies retain the ability to be able to use the internet? Why should they be allowed to have power? Why should you let the trains keep running, especially if you know that military equipment is being transported alongside supplies for civilians?
There's an obvious answer to this - to keep some level of goodwill - but most nations in a similar situation probably would not think the same way. Would America think the same way if they and Mexico had a war in the modern day? I didn't watch it, but apparently the main focus of the recent Top Gun movie was essentially the destruction of Iranian civilian infrastructure.
It's almost a meta issue with this war: why are we able to know what Ukrainians and thinking and doing via internet access in the first place? Why do we get tiktok videos of Ukrainians doing cleanups of bombed-out buildings with funky music in the background?
Maybe now Russia has stopped caring. It's too early to know for certain, maybe this is just another discrete step and they'll leave (non-electric) transport routes for food supplies for Ukrainian civilians intact, for example, or maybe the next few days will see a widespread disabling of Ukraine's ability to function as a nation, but this definitely seems like an "Okay, fuck you" response.
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Your are absolutely right, this war could have been avoided if NATO had wanted peaceful coexistence with Russia. NATO kept pushing for this war and now the people of Ukraine is paying the price.
Also, Russians with Attitude has pointed out that of Ukraine's 15 thermal power plants, exactly none of them were built after the fall of the USSR. The technical knowhow to repair/rebuild these things, let alone quickly, is likely atrophied if it remains at all.
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It's just Russian nationalists going crazy over something lol. Kinda vile since it's mainly going to hurt civilians in the long run
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Pretty sure that’s based on Putin’s speech declaring the war, and it’s a tongue-in-cheek phrase. Basically “you hate Soviets so much? Fine you don’t deserve what they have given you or realize how much you rely on their old tech”. Russia is happy keeping the “communization” of old Soviet society intact, ie keeping Soviet statues, memorials, infrastructure, certain social structures and formalities, etc
because its morally wrong to deprive noncombatants of the necessities of life
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I don't disagree. Russia shouldn't, according to international law (and morality), target power stations, or railways, or civilian fuel depots.
Doing so would win them the war faster, however. Therefore, there's an internal conflict there, which Russia has so far largely (though admittedly not entirely) remained on the more moral side of.
That's the point I'm trying to make.
point was received i just wanted to stress they have a responsibility to humanity not to do such things, lol
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No modern army has ever allowed the enemy state to retain telecommunications, power, supply lines, etc.
Russia was basically fighting with a hand behind its back by trying to do a more moral war. There’s no such thing and if you are going to war there is damage that will be done to civilian populations.
And that’s their biggest mistake. The arrogant and hubris, playing around half ass during war time for what you consider the war that decide the security of your nation. Playing brotherly war and thinking the Nazi will appease to them, the first time was go to Kiev with no plan, and now a defeat at Kharkov, destroying key infrastructure should be on day one, whoever suggest Putin to do this kind of war should get sack
War knows no morals.
is an excuse for inhumanity
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This sounds very much like the justification Israel gave after the Six-Day War. I believe Russia has been the aggressor in this conflict but I understand why many here are hesitant to support the West/NATO/the Ukraine in this conflict. The large number of civilian deaths in the Ukraine that have already occurred are what make me weary of trusting that Russia’s leadership will be humane in the coming months. I have family and friends in the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia and unfortunately I am very worried for all of them at the moment. I believe my Russian friends will remain safe for the time being
War is inhumane.
extremely.
its inherent but that dont make differences in conduct meaningless lol
In the past six months or last 8 years. We saw Ukrainian army targeting civilians and infrastructure in Donbass. Now they spreading out to Russian territory and conducting assassination on Russian civilians and politicians. Surprise it took them this long to finally targeting Ukraine key infrastructure, considering this war is to decide the security of Russia. War it self is inhumane, but that’s the world we live in, world with limited resources and peoples with power playing law of the jungles.
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Yes, they don't plan to occupy those areas any time soon or rather they have given up on that goal. Typically the aggressor wants infrastucture intact while the defender on the retreat does a scorched earth strategy. Hitting the civilian infrastructure as the aggressor implies that you can't occupy it (soon). Like allied bombings in WWII because Germany proper was out of reach for the western allies otherwise.
The military infrastucture like fuel depots and weapons factories were hit by Russia a long time ago. If we talk about phases it seems Russias strategy in phase one was manover warfare which failed in front of kiew, then grinding down the Ukrainian army which failed in front of Bakhmut and now they might try to grind down the civilian population.
Given that Ukraines air defense must be pretty good at this point, since the whole offensive across open ground would have been impossible otherwise, hitting train infrastucture which is both fairly resilient and fairly easy to repair and also can be substituted with road traffic seems expensive since you must use the good rockets that don't get shot down.
Hopefully with all these ludicrous failures by the Russian military, they can maybe start to occupy some land in Ukraine soon! They've been sitting on that border for the last six months!
Could be just now to slow down the next offensive. Ukraine can move troops and equipment from one side of the front line to the other faster than Russia, by going through the middle of Ukraine.
Once the manouvers stop they might stop bombing the infrastructure also.
yeah the "SMO" mask has dropped ... expect a declartion of War and Mobilisation , maybe even 100.000 North Korean volunteers .. Striking the powergrid means you intent to shut it down long term i would assume so this is really a escallation ...
If DPRK joins will the libs on this site who hate Russia begrudgingly side against Ukraine finally? Or will their hatred of Russia overwhelm the presence of an AES in the conflict?
I expect we will see some very idealistic moralizing going around. Hope materialist voices that can understand the practical rationale of the DPRK will prevail.
Has the DPRK given any indication they'll join the war? Sending workers to aid in reconstruction and selling munitions are a far cry from becoming a combatant