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.
Unfortunately this is going to continue to take a long time. The brainless propogandists will have plenty of time to forget the bull shit and lies they spread and make new ones that are just as stupid. Nothing short of the total annihilation of Ukraine's army will shake the shit out of these sorts of peoples heads. They cannot be convinced by a slow relentless barrage of truth. They will just keep changing their narrative and shifting goalposts. They need a sudden violent jolt of truth to get it into their brains that Ukraine has no hope of winning. Anyone who ever said Ukraine will win or even has a chance of winning was either telling lies or was dumb as shit and regurgitating other peoples lies.
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.
What did they do when Russia took Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk? They said "but at what cost" and "not strategically significant" etc.
This is my point unless Russia pushes the whole front line 100km in a week the smooth brain libs just forget what happened a few weeks or months ago and goal post shift because they want to believe Russia is losing. 3 years from now when 10,000 "Volunteer" NATO soldiers are operationally encircled in Kiev the Libs will be saying "While it is a big symbolic victory for Russia, Kiev is not strategically important because it hasn't been the seat of government since it moved to Lviv in 2024."
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.