: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
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.
I find the talk about the super duper mega Ukraine counter offensive in Western media hilariously naive at times, because Ukrainian gains are treated as permanent all the time while all Russian gains are treated as always temporary. Let's say that Ukraine makes a major breakthrough and manages to seize Tokmak and Bilmak in the Zaporozhye axis. What stops the Russians from just sending more soldiers and recapturing the lost positions? The only reason why Russians never recaptured the Kharkov countryside and Kherson is because their current defensive lines are way more appropriate for an army that is fighting a war of attrition. It feels sometimes that these people completely forget that Russia has still 400k mobilized soldiers with nearly 6 months of consistent training that are just chilling in bases waiting to be deployed. That's not counting VDV and other elite units that were recently replenished on the Zaporozhye and Donetsk fronts.
it's an extremely video gamey understanding of war. I think at least one aspect of it is that these are the kinds of people to draw trendlines and assume that they'll never come down, and don't even understand why the trendline is doing what it's doing. it's almost like an unexplainable law of nature to them, they're so ideologically captured by There Is No Alternative.
:to-the-moon: an entire population trained by trend lines
In the public narrative Russia is on the verge of collapse.
It does not follow that they could regain lost territory, in that world. Any offensive leads to permanent gains.
Never forget we are living in two entirely different realities here.
Expect to see more of this due to Russia's defense in depth strategy, with Ukraine's limited gains treated like massive victories while the material/human cost of the offensive is ignored