September 26th's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Next thread here. Sorry, the threads start breaking down at above 1000 comments.
edit: I've found a number of sources to use, mostly based on analysis rather than purely event reporting. I've kept some of the better mainstream sources, but I decided that I was gonna cut the six most aggravating sources out entirely: NYT, WaPo, Bloomberg, Forbes, Business Insider, and Politico. I'm not yet sure if I have enough for fully fledged updates (or maybe eventhe new material is too much) so I will do tomorrow's update with what I've found so far, and if I think I need more, I will add more. Unless I managed to get it just right the first time, I think I will end up iterating over the next week towards the best balance of lots of good sources that don't take too much time to sift through.
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.
No, you're right to be suspicious I think, but also correct in saying that it would have been a win anyway.
97% in Donbass is perfectly possible - I can't imagine being at war with Ukraine for 8 years would have made them many allies here - but, idk, I thought there would be at least a few more people who had strong ties to Ukraine, especially in recently captured territory in the LPR. But equally, of course, the pro-Ukrainian people would have probably left and it depends on where the polling stations are. If they're only in the oblasts' main cities and anybody who wasn't extremely pro-Russia was just apathetic and thought "Well, it's been like this for 8 years, things won't change either way" then they probably wouldn't have voted either way. So it's believable to me. A completely fair election with everybody in the oblast able to take part would have skewed the results down, but not overly much, and still an overwhelming majority are in favour.
Those same figures in Kherson and Zaporozhye are unbelievable to me. Even with all the factors we've discussed combined. It would have still have been a clear majority but not by that much.
But again, it doesn't matter anyway. All it actually means is that Russia is likely to have skewed the results in a vote in some way or another, which basically every country on the planet does. Holy moly, Russia isn't a bastion of (liberal) freedom and (liberal) democracy, exporting those qualities across the region! As if those qualities have done anything to help us here in the west.
Any thoughts on Ukraine possible using the back and forth to the extract loyalists who won’t leave to consolidate motivated manpower? Like if the diehards wanna stay and Rambo they do little good. Extract them during all the back and forth possession of Kherson.
Trainers, political officers, propaganda, many uses.
Guess my point is if there was a drain on Willing to stay loyalists from an authority they accept. Numbers would make sense.
Gonna make a new post for bad thought
Removed by mod