Iran's recently been causing some hubbub in South America. Back in early February, Panama allowed Iranian naval ships to sail through the Panama Canal so long as they abided by international norms, an act which has angered the United States. And more recently, Iranian warships were allowed to dock in Brazil - despite pressure on Lula from both Israel and the United States - with Ted Cruz making some rather lackluster threats.
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.
March 6th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 7th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 8th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 10th's update is here in the comments.
I'm gonna be researching and writing up an effortpost on rare earth elements and how China owned the West in that field over the weekend so no update on Saturday.
I'd also like to bring to your attention another effortpost I've put on the site, by @ComradeRat, in response to a question about early Marxist thinkers and terminology, like "historical materialism" and "scientific socialism", and who exactly invented these terms and were they misused by others later on, etc.
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 decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
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 relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the warzone.
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 ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist (but still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Another big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia's army.
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
Almost every Western media outlet.
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.
Impossible to say for sure. I'm waiting for people more in the know to give theories and seeing if I'm convinced.
Russia seems to only be increasing its missile production (and the materials required for it can be nationally sourced, gotten via import substitution, or from China; the chips required for the missiles are, apparently, not the most cutting edge, even for the hypersonic missiles), so I don't think it's that. They have been producing more hypersonic missiles, though I've never seen exact figures nor do I think the Russians are going to start touting them - though I imagine western intelligence has a ballpark estimate of production figures.
Is it possible that Ukraine's air defense isn't nearly in as bad a shape as purported by some on the pro-Russian side? Absolutely possible, but then you do have to explain why Russia is being allowed to increasingly bomb frontline positions. One reason could be that they're stockpiling anti-air missiles, but for what exactly? A REALLY big missile strike to completely disable the country's electrical system? What's stopping Russia from just never delivering that coup de grace but constantly teasing it via deception, and just attriting it over time (AKA, literally what they're been doing for months)? To use as a surprise attack if Russia tries to bomb deeper into the country with a bunch of planes? What if that never happens?
What eddies said below is true, this has been a Russian tactic for a while now; they launch missiles at targets, then Ukraine is given the choice: attempt to shoot these missiles down to protect something important, and thus give away the position of your anti-air systems for subsequent destruction in the shortly arriving wave of missiles/drones, or don't shoot them down and let them hit the important thing. A win-win situation for Russia that Ukraine has no counter for. Why this would necessarily involve hypersonics at this point though, idk. Maybe Ukraine is moving their systems very quickly after they fire so a very rapid response is required.
Perhaps it's testing their true potential and damage for a future purpose, like blowing up bridges or collapsing tunnels. There's nothing quite like testing a missile in an actual warzone.
And I guess it could be a show of strength to the West that they have these missiles and they have quite a few of them, so do not fuck with us, but this seems a rather silly reason at this point. They already showed off a hypersonic missile quite early on in the conflict, pretty much to explicitly tell the West "Yes, we do in fact have this capability, we weren't lying, we can produce them. If NATO gets involved then we could put an Avangard in Berlin in under five minutes and there's literally nothing you could do to stop us."