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.
So I somehow managed to slog through 3 hours of speeches, need to start at the beginning to watch the final hour. They started to blend in with a lot of decent stuff of "stop funding the Ukraine war and use the money to help the people" "No war with Russia and China" lots of "war is a racket, and funded by wall street". I think there was like 3 that had anti-vax bits out of everyone so a it was a very surprising minority. Some highlights that stuck out in my mind: the lady from the grayzone complaining about the online left looking down their nose at the event to which I screamed :logout: and focus on the even you're at. One of the dudes that said he almost got smoked by an American 155 mm shell in his hotel when he went to interview people in Donbass, Hinkle gave a sort of fratboy's third speech, very shouty, the one guy that talked about Smedley Butler and how this racket has been an inter-generational one, the one crotchety old fucker that riffed on the ghouls, Ron Paul saying he learned what AIs are and proceeded to say Congress is filled with bots then giving a long-winded rambling speech about something-something volunteerism something-something-abolish the Fed holy shit he sucks at speaking. Lots of riffs about blowing up pipelines and balloons. Oh yeah I think Gabbard's gunning for another bid for the whitehouse who wants to take bets on whether she's gonna run on a red ticket or a blue ticket? Oh yeah there's actually a guy with the nickname of "pasta" :fidel-wut: also he's that guy that talked about Smedley Butler since I had to check. There was also a guy that said being anti war isn't enough you also gotta be anti war propaganda aka if the CIA says a country's evil you don't do their work for them by not manufacturing consent for the MIC to inch the US closer to war. Also someone said essentially Ohio got nuked, like actually saying that lmao. Someone also brought up Collin Powell lying to cause the massacre of millions of Iraqis, then went on to say the bits like Saddam ripping babies from incubaters, Qadaffii handing out viagra, Assad gassing his own people, and Putin losing badly but about to march on Berlin and saying all (our) wars are lies. Dennis Kucinich kinda looks like a knock-off Christopher Walker, also gave a long fucking speech. I actually thought he was a libertarian until I looked him up. Also a few riffs along the lines of 'we can argue about pronouns or whether teenage girls can be safe in bathrooms with biologically born boys but we gotta put aside the culture war stuff to fight against nuclear war' had me go :cringe: why would you bring that specifically up if not to needle on the point also :fidel-bat:
My favorite highlight hands down was the very end where Roger Waters delivered a video speech. It was a very 'Nam reminiscent speech that finishes on Lennon's "Give Peace A Chance"
All in all, general judgement :shrug-outta-hecks: I was hoping for more hog slop but I'm left with an empty bowl.
Edit: the extra hour is a lie, I actually managed to accidentally jump to the start of the event with the first speech given by glenn greenwald, whom I didn't actually understand a word he said because the audio was shit. the only bit I got was him quoting the queen of hearts saying we should metaphorically chop off the heads of the war mongers. Also I learned Larouche had a wife who's German and is still alive from a sign mentioning her name and saying america should join hands with Russia, China, and India, to forge a new multi-polar world, also she is in a spat with her husband's yankee followers to which I say lol.
Removed by mod