Here is November 7th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is November 8th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
I strategically retreated from doing an update on Wednesday (and I always perform tactical update withdrawals on Thursdays and Sundays) so this next one covers a bit from those two days.
Here is November 11th'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.
I knew that somebody would show up and say something like this.
I read a couple lines and could extrapolate the rest from that. All I can say is that wars are not football matches and propaganda is not real life. Imagine if I wiped your mind clean of historical facts and then asked you to extrapolate from the situation in WW2 when the Nazis were within miles of Moscow after constant retreats. What would your analysis be - that the Nazis would win or the Soviets would win?
Anyway, I'm ultimately not trying to draw parallels between victories and defeats from history - besides, there's been so many combinations and permutations that you could probably bring up a war from the 1400s which looks a little like this and go "See, Russia wins" and then one from the 500s which also looks like this and go "See, Russia loses" -
All we can do is judge the industrial and military might of both countries, and the current state of their countries. Ukraine + the West looks considerably weaker than Russia on that basis. This will remain true until NATO joins the war, if it ever does.
And I don't take anybody who says "cope" or similar 4chan-esque terms unironically remotely seriously in analysis.
How is the collective west industrially weaker than Russia? There are also very clear signs that Russian industry has some hard problems dealing with the lack of parts under the sanctions. Thats something that usually doesn't show up if you just look at the GDP with is held up by gas and oil. As for the respective MIC the west has tons of grift there, but the budgets are so high that it hardly matters when compared to Russia and it is difficult to assume to what degree western parts played a role in the Russian MIC. The state of the soldiers sees the Ukrainians much better motivated than the Russians who I assume wonder regularly what they even fight for.