December 5th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 6th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 7th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 9th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 10th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
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. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
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. Beware of chuddery.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are fairly brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. The Duran, of which he co-hosts, is where the chuddery really begins to spill out.
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 ~ Now rebranded as Battlefield Insights, they do infrequent posts on the conflict.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
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 ~ One of the really big pro-Russian (except when they're being pessismistic, which is often) telegram channels focussing on the war. 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. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Any Western media outlet that is even vaguely liberal (and quite a few conservative ones too).
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.
During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum. :parenti::parenti: :parenti::parenti::parenti:
we should get this quote as a gigantic emoji
On top of that, I've definitely noticed the constantly shifting rhetoric about the war depending on events, in terms of who the combatants are.
When Russia experiences a setback or a loss, the overwhelming theme I get is "Look at what Ukraine has done to injure Russia here! Ukraine is doing such a great job fighting Russia!" as if they were doing it alone, thus proving that this poor, weak country is at least the same strength if not stronger than Russia. It's rarely the other way around - Ukraine taking what Russian held of Kharkov oblast wasn't commonly depicted as a win for the West, it was depicted as a win for Ukraine.
When Russia achieves a victory or does something controversial, the themes become a lot more muddied - some go in the "Actually, Russia taking this territory is completely insignificant and here's a 20 paragraph twitter thread about why" direction even though it's obviously a big event, whereas those with the strength to not immediately start huffing copium and downplaying things instead magnify them, explaining how this is a crime against the West and the civilized world, and that the West should do more; close the skies, send more tanks, send more missiles and HIMARS. Like, the focus isn't some kind of reflection on the loss itself, there's no period where it's like "Okay, who's actually in a better position to win this war?" it's an immediate jump from "Russia took this territory" to "We must give Ukraine 100 fighter jets". Compare to Russian threads, where there's a weak-long depression about the values of accepting the bad with the good and to keep up hope despite failure, etc etc.
And to ward off too much criticism right away: I think some of the pro-Ukraine - or fervently anti-Russia to the point where they might as well be pro-Ukraine - people we still have hanging around, and we don't have many anymore (which is unexpected honestly, I figure that as we're either at or close to Ukraine's territorial zenith, we'd have a lot more people writing swathes about how Ukraine is going to win), would say something like "Aha, but when you were talking about Russian losses, you said that this was because the militia were fighting there, not the Russian forces, so you were huffing copium!" but
a) it was in fact true, the militia often were the actual fighting force there, with only some Russian help in the back doing some artillery work; and as a matter of fact, there has been a lot of criticism of Russia not doing more to help the militia, and only dedicating like 150k troops, and just kinda standing around cheerleading them while the Russian army proper fucked off to Kiev and Kharkov and Kherson; whereas the West has been fully involved in intelligence gathering and putting plans together and sending equipment to Ukraine from almost the very beginning.
b) that was all prior to the territories being admitted into Russia itself - and before the Russians actually bothered to put a goddamn general in charge of this thing instead of making the general staff in Moscow plan the war - and now Surovikin has been bringing in lots of engineers and builders to construct defense systems across the whole front and actually fucking help the militia out.