December 26th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 27th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 28th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 30th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
Going out with friends today and tomorrow! Next week and onwards things should return to normal and we can continue drudging through in the second year of this war.
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.
Apparently some DPRK drones flew over the border and into the outskirts of Seoul.
Two South Korean aircraft went to intercept and bravely crashed to the ground.
From Slavangrad:
How the fuck is western military equipment this shitty?
In other drone news, Ukraine has once again sent a drone towards Engels airbase, where some of Russia's nuclear arsenal is kept. It was once again shot down.
We've had some additional information on these drones in the meantime and it turns out that while they're based on some fairly old drones, the West has been hard at work modifying them to make them incredibly difficult to detect and shoot down, though Russia does possess the technology to do so (and has done so, at least twice). So my previous comment a few weeks ago about how this was a big failure of Russian anti-air was technically true but a little overblown, as these drones have been modified and designed over the course of the last year to do exactly this, taking into account what NATO knows about Russia's air defense. As the Russian government puts more funding into its military (as one of the Bhadrakumar articles I put in this thread mentions), I imagine they'll figure something out.
People have pointed out that this is essentially equivalent to Russia modifying drones to fire into American nuclear bases from Cuba. I'm sure Posadas would be happy to know he has so many followers in NATO command. But Russia refuses to take the bait, which must really piss off Volodymyr "Russia fired a missile at that Polish tractor and NATO should invade!" Zelensky.
Thirty years of focusing on murdering shepherds and imagining there is no such thing as a peer competitor coming home to roost, lol
We need an "Andrei Martyanov" emoji for whenever this topic comes up
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He's an ex-Russian naval officer who now makes almost daily videos on youtube and has a blog where he talks about military things. He knows his shit when talking about the Russian and Western militaries and doctrines and stuff (though once he starts veering off into "wokeism", then his analysis rapidly deteriorates). He also wrote a book about it.
He's kinda been covering the war but not in the same way as people like Mercouris is; rather, he essentially approaches the daily/weekly issues to do with weapons and equipment (say, when the US sends howitzers or drones or now the Patriot system; or the equivalent on the Russian side) and rants about them for 20 minutes. And also talks about things only semi-related to the war, like Russia's submarines vs Western ones (he was a naval officer after all).
He is completely and utterly sure of Russia's eventual victory, last time I was paying attention to him back in September, to the point where he only seems annoyed by apparent Russian defeats, like the retreat in Kharkov, only because people start commenting annoying things about it - otherwise he just doesn't even care because he knows what the eventual outcome will be. He made a post back in September or thereabouts about how he trusts virtually none of the Russian telegram channels because they don't know shit about how militaries work, including Rybar, and I do trust him on that - thus I grew increasingly hesitant to mention analysis or information from places like Rybar and Slavyangrad, and have stopped doing so for the most part.
Unironically western military equipment is designed to keep the global south in line, not fight with opponents at level footing
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Everything manufactured by the MIC is engineered in a way that it generates profit even after the initial purpose. The ability to destroy and maneuver with said products is just a byproduct.
I wonder if this is another example of old tech vs new tech being weird. Like, there's some story about old slow moving prop fighter planes not being able to be tracked by some early generation radar controlled anti air guns because the planes moved slower than the system's lowest trackable speed.
The example of the slow prop planes being unable to be tracked originates from the sinking of the Bismarck.
How I understand it wasn't radar but a more old fashioned fire control system which was unable to track the slow as balls Fairey Swordfishes on their attack runs. Explanations I have seen were that the fire control system wasn't fully working, that they just didn't hit anything because the ship was moving wildly to try and dodge torpedoes aaand that the planes were so slow they just not designed with something that ancient in mind.
They were also using planes built out of stretched canvas, making the German munitions ineffective. They just went right through leaving a small hole.