Here is September 19th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is September 20th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is September 21st's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is September 23rd's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is September 24th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
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.
While all of us understand that this is really just a war, calling it a special military operation isn't just a way of being able to say "Well, we're not actually at war with Ukraine" for whatever advantages in diplomacy that may hold, it does set very real legal limits on what Russia can do in Ukraine, as opposed to an actual declaration of war.
For example, Russia has only had 100,000 troops taking part in the war at any given time (there might be 200,000 but they're rotated in and out), aside from the militias from the DPR and LPR, whereas Ukraine has a numerical advantage as they have somewhere in the realm of 600,000 troops, even if they aren't properly trained.
Additionally, Russia has, until very recently, self-limited themselves from striking Ukrainian civilian infrastructure - even the trains that are bringing in supplies and military equipment to the Ukrainian front lines, presumably because they have civilian supplies mixed in too (there could be other reasons too, like wanting Ukraine to bring all their shit to the front lines to be destroyed).
I haven't actually seen direct confirmation that Russia is no longer in an SMO and has transitioned to outright war, but that seems to be very heavily implied by Putin's announcement.
Some people have called what Russia is doing "lawfare", which I think is apt. Of course it's ultimately performative to Westerners, but for their own citizens and the citizens of countries outside the West (AKA the overwhelming majority of the world's population), I think it's meaningful and can be directly compared to something like America's wars, where they just come blasting in, kill civilians en masse, destroy all the civilian infrastructure in sight, and then steal that country's resources. In some ways I think Russia is re-creating the idea of a war that isn't just a purely neoimperial, neocolonial grab of that country's resources. Whether any of us here believe that, or the people in the West (probably not) believe that is kinda immaterial. We aren't the intended audience.
Another important factor here is Russians wanting everything intact because they actually intend to rule these territories later. It would be hard to justify annexing a destroyed shell of a city and the money needed to integrate it would be astronomical. None of the territories intended for annexations are in a bad state right now maybe except Mariupol. Bombing the shit out of a city tends to ruin your reputation as a "liberator".
I think he's talking about western Ukraine which Russia is obviously not annexing.