October 17th's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary!
October 18th's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary!
Next update will be next Friday, but I'll be poking around the thread during that time. Next thread will go up on Monday like usual.
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.
Do we actually think that the Ukrainian People (with a capital P) have a say? Like, I understand the military aspect of making the populace feel the cost of war (in a democratic country [or at least a nominal one]). But does this actually affect strategic stuff or is it just making the average person suffer more?
No. The people don't get a say in the naive way middle school civics taught us how western democracies work. Decisions on the war are probably not even made in Ukraine anymore.
However, even the most autocratic regime ultimately relies on the cooperation of the people. A demoralised war-weary population is not going to produce good motivated soldiers not are they going to provide the regime with the necessary civilian support. There has been reports on Ukrainian units refusing to fight and relatives to conscripted soldiers protesting and demanding to know where their loved ones are. More and more of this is going to chip away at the Ukrainian state's legitimacy and ability to fight.
Thanks for informing me. I wasn’t aware.
I think I ought to add that we don't know the scope of anti-regime activism in Ukraine, fog of war and all that. It could be anything from a few isolated instances to imminent collapse of the state.
I tend to think its a bit of both. When you consider how far the Nazi sentiment has gone in Ukraine I believe dissent would be dealt with quickly and brutally. Even if there is popular support for dissent it will be muffled by fear. The collapse will go really quickly once the ability for the nazis to intimidate everyone starts to wane.
Word. I would not voice my dissent if I was in Ukraine by now. One of the famous incidents from the Maidan coup that initiated this conflict was thousands of Ukrainian nationalists forcing ethnic Russians in to a building and setting the building on fire, killing forty people. I assume things have only gotten much worse as the Nazis have gained more formal power and the SBU has ramped up repression.
I have to imagine that there are a lot of normal, unbrainpoisoned Ukrainians who have no racial animus against Russians and think this whole thing is a surreal nightmare. So many people have friends and relations across the border and hold double citizenship that the regime had to criminalize holding double citizenship and force people to choose a side in order to isolate them from the "Enemy".
You may not be aware (and certainly the western media won't tell you) that Zelensky was elected on a platform of, among other things, stopping the war on the Donbass region and detente with Russia. Zelensky got into office and tried to tell the Nazis shelling hospitals to stop, they laughed at him and did not. The artillery strikes on civilians ramped up heavily right before the Russian invasion, as well. The will of The People in Ukraine was to end this war and stop the war crimes, but Nazis backed by NATO were actually in charge.
Here's a video of Zelensky telling troops to pull back and they're refusing. I had a link to a longer one but it was deleted. It does contain the "I'm not a loser" part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8YNK7TsQL4
It’s about disabling the entire war machine. It has nothing to do with punishing the people or anything moralistic like that. It has to do with disabling transport, logistics, etc.
America and NATO wipe these things out on day 1 of their invasions, and it’s a pragmatic concern. Russia was honestly foolish not to. This is what war is, and Russia tried to have a “peaceful war”
You can hardly blame them for trying to avoid the bloodthirsty savagery of Nato, especially against people they consider essentially the same nation who are only separated from them because of insane Nazis from Galicia.