Apparently there are now discussions over whether to send the F-16 as well as tanks!
This sounds like an even worse idea to me, and it probably isn't going to happen for a while even if they agree to send them, but regardless - the war has reached the point where such discussions are seriously occurring.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
January 30th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 31st's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 1st's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 3rd's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
Sorry, no update today, Xi Jinping has put me inside this giant balloon. Apparently we're testing a new kind of mass surveillance + mind control technology to turn everybody into communists? Not sure where I am right now but I heard aircraft going by yesterday. I'll be back on solid ground by Monday.
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.
South America refuses to send guns to Ukraine :latam-solidarity:
Latin America isn't considering sending armaments to Ukraine, says President of Argentina Alberto Fernandez in joint press conference with Olaf Scholz.
When asked by Emmanuel Macron about the War in Ukraine, Lula said that "Brazil's war is against poverty".
Colombia rejects US proposal to supply Ukraine with Russian weapons.
Lol
“On December 10, 2003 I was already elected President of the Republic, and I was invited by President Bush to go to the United States. When I arrived in the United States, Bush was involved in the war in Iraq."
"The war hadn't started yet, but he was obsessive and talked so much about that war, that the impression he gave me was that there was already a war. And, after almost 40 minutes in which President Bush convinced me of the need to combat terrorism by attacking Iraq."
"I said to President Bush: President Bush, Iraq is not Brazil's problem. I have another war to fight in my country, which is to fight the misery and hunger of 50 million Brazilians who live below the poverty line."
Lula da Silva on his relation with President Bush
Lmaooooooo US authorities are saying they’ve discovered a giant Chinese spy balloon over a military base in Montana and are currently circling it with 3 Air Force planes.
Absolutely uncritical support to the people’s eye in the sky :deng-salute:
promised myself not to drink this week and basically I have to do a will saving throw every 45 minutes. I've already put my boots and coat on and left only to stop myself halfway from the convenience store twice tonight. I expect I'll still be awake at 3am just staring at the fucking ceiling and stressing about bullshit.
addiction and ADHD are a shitty fucking mix
edit : wait this isn't a general thread
i asked chatgpt to describe why the soviet union wasnt a dictatorship and it brought up the fact that it had a black market and was by definition not a totalitarian dictatorship because they could not control black market forces
i am wilding
Brazil wants to peace between Russia and Ukraine, Lula wants President Xi to help him with the peace talks. :xigma-male: :solidarity: :lula-bars:
During his meeting with Olaf Scholtz, Lula da Silva talked about the Ukraine Conflict: 'Brazil made the decision not to pass on the ammunition because we don't want it to be used in the war against Russia.'
Lula: China has an important role in searching for an to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Brazil doesn’t want to send ammunition to be used in the conflict.
"I want to talk about peace between Russia and Ukraine with President Xi Jinping."
"Brazil has no interest in passing on ammunition to be used in the war between Ukraine and Russia. Brazil is a country of peace. At this moment, we need to find those who want peace, a word that until now has been used very little."
"The Chinese have a very important role in this. If I go to China in March, I want to talk about Russia-Ukraine peace with President Xi Jinping."
Hard Drinking and Murky Finances: How an American Veterans Group Imploded in Ukraine
The story of how "PMC Mozart", a group of American mercenaries in the Ukraine, collapsed under the weight of their own corruption, incompetence and infighting while the PTSD-ridden alcoholised mercenaries blew all the money in Kiev strip clubs.
Pretty depressing to hear all the China Uighur cultural genocide shit and then here the average attitude towards the Sami in regards to displacing their homes and disrupting their reindeer keeping ranges from "We're coddling these people to let them LARP being poor little reindeer keepers" to "Well its unfortunate but we gotta get those rare earth metals, we need it for the green readjustment and to save the environment! It's not like we can just prioritise this one minority all the time(Translators note: Can't think of a single time Samis have been prioritised or taken seriously).
Brings to mind the critique of the Green New Deal as colonialist and imperialist because it relies on harvesting raw materials from the global south, seems like there should be some human rights boycotts against Swedish rare earth metals.
Launching from Poland or Romania also means that's those airbases, inside of NATO member countries, are legitimate targets for Russia, which is a huge escalation. UAF is already receiving training inside these counties, but officially launching military operations from them is a different thing.
Because I'm a glutton for embarrassing myself I'll say that they probably won't send F-16s and that it's some guys that haven't gotten the memo what it is that the us actually wants from this conflict. This seems like when journalists and some politicians called for a no-fly zone and then a month later for a no-sea zone. It's far more likely that the US will send all kinds of missile systems.
The thing about the F-16 is that it is the good shit compared to the F-35. But also I keep going between 'the US gov knows what it is doing' to 'the US gov is more concerned with looking tough than doing what's smart' like they are willing sink america to own the republican libs, which is just weird.
The F-16 is a system that was designed 40 years ago but that doesn't mean that there were no 'upgrades' done to it over that same time frame. Also I'm not saying that the F-16 can go toe to toe with an SU-57 what I am saying is that it is a better piece of weaponry than the F-35 because it is just straight up ten times more reliable than the F-35 and the US knows that and if it becomes more clear for other nations no one is going to go for their new overpriced toy.
If a bunch of F-16s get destroyed, the US can tell everyone "See, this is why you need to buy the F-35." They will say something to the effect of that they couldn't trust the UAF with the F-35 because their pilots aren't good enough/trained well enough or that the UAF is potentially too compromised with Russian spies.
That didn't stop the US from becoming the Hegemon, that's what I actually mean the US built up this elaborate network of organisations and economic tools to maintain their position that it now seemingly is tearing down the biggest one under severe threat right now is US dollar hegemony, but also it seems like their grasp over the periphery is going to go away incredibly soon, south america is slowly going away, the deindustrialization of europe is going to weaken the US' position in africa because france is not going to enforce neo-colonialism when they don't have any use for resources.
My worry is that the US is not going to go the way of the British Hegemon and are just going to wreck everything on their way out. Because that's all I can see at the moment.
I mean technically speaking, they still aren't. They're drawing it out by so much that everyone is just gonna forget they promised to do so in the first place.
Oh cool, it's like vaccine patent waivers but with a good outcome instead :doomer:
SAM sites
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the older Russian S-400 was designed specifically to chew up F-15s and F-16s too.
"Sorry, the f35s are grounded until they're done patching. Unfortunately, the last update was to fix the firmware and that bricked them, so the techs are working overtime."
If they send F-35s it's gonna be hilarious when like 10 of them over the skies of Ukraine suddenly crash all at once, and people are gonna be like "Holy shit, what amazing weapon have the Russians developed that can do this to our planes?! We need 10 trillion dollars more in military spending, ASAP!" and it was actually just them receiving a software update midflight that blocks access to the controls
I remember that part, I'm surprised that got past the military censors.
F-16s are not all operated at the same level. There are many different versions(blocks) including mid-life upgrades optional for countries. As a preamble I'd say the F-16 became ubiquitous because it is the standard multi-role fighter. The F-16 was never the superior interceptor, the US uses F-15/22 for that. The F-16 did a lot of things well and at the best operational costs(due to single engine), but it was never seen as some wonder plane like the current propaganda. The 90s was dominated by the fixation over F-22 and stealth becoming the "endgame". Then modern European figthers like the Rafale, Typhoon, Grippen are all superior and more modern.
The earlier versions the blocks A/B(used by some NATO countries) are pretty outdated fighters far and away incapable of measuring up to modern standards including the Su-30 and above family. They were initialy superior to the Mig-29s but only up to par against the Su-27. In BvR engagements(long distance missile fights) the F-16 has no advantage over the Russians, simply because the AA-12 still is a damn monster which was for decades the best AA missile in the world in terms of maneuverability + range. The "solution" to defeating it was always to turn away and run.
The "standard" versions are the block C/D 52s. These were the most popular "modern" version but it is also a package from the 90s and it works as well as any old car is supposed to work if well maintained. These only exist in Poland and Turkey. The US wont supply these since it is a key fighter for many of its allies.
The real "good" shit are the most modern versions IMO you can be absolutely sure these will never make it to Ukraine, not only they are expensive but the risk of espionage is too high. If they are concerned about Abrams tech then modern F-16s are also impossible.
Republicans removed Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee over her criticism of Israel lol.
The Balloon Discourse(tm) is breaking my brain, some anti China melts I know and loads of people on social media are acting like this is a borderline Chinese military incursion, it feels like some kind of mass hysteria is descending on society.
Kind of amazing how the US through its propaganda is able to convince most of the world that it's a force for good. Remember watching documentaries about Yemeni teens talking about how they loved America and Obama was seen as a symbol of what it meant to be an American. Even still held on to those beliefs as the American drones attacked them.
Meanwhile, China is hated by a lot of the world for way less on a much smaller scale.
