:macron:

The devil went down to China,
He was goin' to give Xi a spiel
He was in a bind, pension reform enshrined
And he was willin' to sit and kneel

Image from this Politico article.

Macron (and Ursula von der Leyen, though nobody seems to care about her) went to Beijing, with the initially stated aim of trying to convince Xi Jinping to bring Russia to its senses. Obviously, the Chinese were entirely uninterested in this given that they had just formed an alliance in all but name with the Russians, and the two countries are now united in both long term economic deals, and also in their opposition to the Western bloc.

Macron's visit has, unexpectedly for me, been an interesting one. It sometimes feels like every media source I see has an entirely new outlook on what happened. But one thing is for certain: the western media appears to be quite annoyed by Macron, because he supposedly went to tell Xi off for being naughty, and then made statements while there warning that Europe must not become America's followers, thus implying he's pursuing an independent foreign policy.

But at the end of the day, all of these words are just... well, words. We shall see if Europe, or at least western Europe, will actually try and strike a balance or if they will continue to be vassals of the US. I'm certainly not holding my breath.

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.

April 10th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.

April 12th's update is here in the comments.

April 14th's update is here in the comments

Sorry everyone, I'm having a busy weekend, so it'll be a three-update week this time around.

Links and Stuff

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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.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]M
    ·
    2 years ago

    Today's Mercouris video: Pushilin Claims Bakhmut Advances Marinka Gains; Pentagon Thinks Ukraine Only Capable of Modest Gains

    The drought of direct military news from the fronts continues. The Guardian has a report admitting that Russian electronic warfare is increasingly effective against Ukrainian drones, with one Ukrainian soldier suggesting that it will be very difficult for Ukraine to use drones within 4 months, though it might well be earlier. We have more reports of Russian airstrikes, both on the current fronts - notably, including Orikhov, the likely staging point of the Ukrainian counteroffensive - and up in the north. Overall, it looks like the Russian airforce is relying less on missiles and more on precision-guided and very heavy bombs, and this is capable of more damage. Russia has been using some of these bombs on relatively small bridges, and Mercouris speculates that the Russian airforce is testing and familiarizing themselves with their effects, and they might eventually target larger bridges like those across the Dniper.

    There are reports in the NYT and WaPo that Ukraine is only expected to make modest and incremental gains in their counteroffensive and would not be able to cut the land bridge, in exchange for very heavy losses for Ukraine; there are suggestions that Ukraine will make up for their lack of artillery with more infantry, with the logic being to overwhelm Russian defenses by sheer weight of manpower rather than breaking them down with artillery. And there is no possibility of Ukraine being re-equipped post-offensive to nearly the same extent that they were last summer.

    Mercouris believes that these leaks have been leaked from the Pentagon, and in fact were authorized to be leaked, and is another offensive action by the realists against the neoconservatives. These leaks are very conveniently timed with news coming out of the EU that they cannot supply a million shells as promised; that Slovakia can't send some of its planes due to "Russian sabotage"; that Bulgaria isn't sending any of its planes as they would require Russian technical support, which is obviously a slight issue; there are issues with plans for Ukraine to use American JDAMs, as they haven't been very effective, with some suggestions that the Russians have found ways to jam the GPS of these bombs, though it seems just as likely to me that there's some user error given that they're being launched from old Soviet planes, or that they just don't work very well in near-peer conditions.