Image is of Wang Yi, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, delivering a speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2023.
China has put forward a quite general peace proposal, which I imagine is both for Ukraine and also meant to be a general guide for solving conflicts in the future, with 12 points. Unfortunately it has no lobsters, nor dragons of chaos.
These 12 points are, as follows: respect the sovereignty of all countries and all countries are equal; abandon Cold War mentalities; cease hostilities; resume peace talks; resolve humanitarian crises; protect civilians and POWs; keep nuclear power plants safe (what a jab!); reduce strategic risks (that is, nuclear war); facilitate grain exports; stop unilateral sanctions; keep industrial and supply chains stable - the economy is not a weapon; and promote post-conflict reconstruction.
TeleSUR goes into more depth on each point for those interested.
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 27th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 28th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 1st's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 3rd's update is here in the comments.
March 4th's update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
American anti-war rally on March 18th by left groups!
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.
I'm reading more on it and I feel like this is something I'd need a textbook to understand fully, but I think the order of events is that the rift was forming 500 million years ago or so and continued to do so for the next couple hundred millions of years, but it was the failed arm of a triple junction. Then the Variscan orogeny came along and this resulted in further synclinal structures as the crust buckled (so the Azov Uplands are perhaps the eroded remains of some of the mountains formed during that orogeny?). There was further volcanic activity in the area due to the orogeny, and the synclines flooded in the Middle Devonian, forming basins, then the waters eventually retreated, came back, retreated, etc until the glaciers covered the area and eroded it closer to the modern day, which is probably why the country is so flat in places, and here we are today.