Image is of Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, with Sudanese Foreign Minister, Maryam al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, at a news conference in Khartoum.
Russia, China, and the United States have been scrambling for Africa over the last year.
Lavrov has recently been to Mali, Mauritania, and Sudan. Last year, he went to South Africa, Eswatini, Angola, Eritrea, Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda, and the PRC. I'm actually having trouble finding consistent lists, he's been zipping around so much. He's reinforced ties with Sudan and their Russian naval base, and South Africa is holding naval exercises with China and Russia.
Qin Gang, the new Chinese Foreign Minister, has been to Angola, Gabon, Benin, Egypt, and Ethiopia - notably, the first diplomatic tour he's been on since being appointed FM, as others before him (in a 30 year tradition).
Meanwhile, Janet Yellen has gone to Senegal, Zambia, and South Africa. And, of course, Biden invited leaders from all across Africa to the US-Africa Leaders Summit in December 2022.
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.
February 13th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 14th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 15th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 17th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 18th'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.
Mainstream TV news is reporting on the severe Ukrainian ammunition shortage. They found a positive way to spin it though, doing perseverance porn about Ukrainians loading tiny drones with DIY bombs made of beer cans.
The report ended with the correspondence looking into the camera and saying this amazing sentence:
the Ukrainians sending men into the meat grinder over and over again? smart, modern thinking
the Russians proceeding cautiously, slamming the enemy with massive amounts of artillery and relying on mercenaries and separatist militias to do the heavy infantry fighting while preserving their own forces? stupid, outdated
I guess the Afghans were geniuses then for beating the Americans without NATO help
no racism here no siree
The same channel was also doing a segment on how bad the "Soviet era" equipment used by both Ukraine and Russia is. They told about how brilliant Ukraine was being for scavenging disabled or captured Russian vehicles for parts and ammo. However, even they had to admit that Ukraine can never get as much equipment as Russia has. This, we were told, is not a hopeless situation for Ukraine though as the promised NATO equipment is so much better than whatever Russia has that it makes up for being outnumbered.
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I really do wonder how they will spin it once Russia starts making significant territorial gains. Will they be posting about how Russia is not winning "fast enough", and how that means that they are actually weak and pathetic?
Sometimes I really do feel like nothing short of nuclear war has any chance of making liberals realize their whole worldview is warped.
If Russia takes all of Ukraine, Liberals will do two things:
1: Blame Germany for failing to support Ukraine more. (While they don't realize it, one of the geopolitical goals of this conflict was to punish Germany, so Germany will be set out as the scapegoat.)
2: Claim victory when Russia doesn't invade another country afterwards. (As their narrative has been that Putin is Hitler, and will definitely do so if he can.)
It wouldn't be so sad if it wasn't so utterly predictable.
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Liberals think Putler wants to ethnically cleanse Ukrainians from the face of the planet, so as long as a single Ukrainian is still alive, liberals can say that Putler didn't accomplish his goal of genociding Ukrainians.
NATO equipment? Why aren’t they just sending out The Ghost of Kyiv? He can kill 50,000 Russians with a simple pistol mounted on a biplane
:agony-shivering:
Danish State media interviewed a professor at the defense academy and he literally said that the russian fighting in Bakhmut was reminiscent of the Red army's strategies in WWII, which is proof that Putin is deranged and insane or someshit. I had to turn it off to avoid screaming at the TV so loud that I woke up my wife and daughter.
Incredible lmao. Wonder how the media is going to react when the house of cards come tumbling down and Ukraine does not end up taking back Crimea or their territory in the East. How will they spin it?
There's an episode of Blowback called "The Iraq War did not Take Place". Watch it for a sneak preview of upcoming events.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pf4ycYaYEY
In the US, my money is on them completely ignoring it. Most Americans have forgotten about the war already.
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Oh this piggy had some opinions on that one as well I'm sure. I actually went back and rewatched the interview and the guy in question said that Putins strategy in the Ukraine war was reminiscent of the Red Army in WWII, specifically the part where the red army took territory from the nazis, but at a casualty rate that was three times higher than the german one. As far as I am concerned, this dude being an instructor at the defense academy explains a hell of a lot about how Denmark got our ass kicked in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/14/u-s-training-ukrainian-troops-use-less-ammo-00082765
Here's an article about the same topic with the same type of spin.
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