Get it? The Sturmabteilung?
Anyway, Ukraine will probably launch its counteroffensive soon. Maybe this week. Maybe next week. Eventually, for sure. Probably. So I'm taking the week off to prepare for it. Your regularly scheduled programming will be back on May 1st.
Image is of dragon's teeth fortifications in Ukraine, from the wikipedia article.
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.
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.
Russian fishing vessels spy on the Faroe Islands
Danish media is continuing their scare campaign about scary secret Russian espionage in Denmark. This time it is about civilian Russian fishing vessels docking at Faroese harbours.
Russian ships are banned from the EU but the Faroe Islands is not a member of the EU despite being a Danish colony. The Faroese government has decided to keep allowing Russian fishing vessels to dock on the Faroes as fisheries is an extremely important part of the local economy which would be hurt badly if the Faroese-Russian fishing agreement was cancelled and Faroese ships were banned from Russian waters.
It is not a lie that Russia is conducting espionage based off these vessels. Last November Norwegian police raided two of the vessels and found a military radio as well as an operator in a hidden compartment in each.
The story doesn't mention whether Faroese ships are being used by NATO to spy on Russia.
Danish politicians are in a frenzy and especially the conservatives are demanding an immediate ban on all Russian ships in the Faroe Islands. This does not please the Faroese self-rule government who are angry about being overruled by their colonial overlords, an anger which is only made greater by the possible economic implications of ending the fishing agreement. The Danish government is siding with the Faroese government at the moment although making nebulous statements about how Denmark "has an obligation to stop espionage against the Danish commonwealth".
Some politicians and other members of the talking classes are speculating that the Russian espionage happens as part of a plot to drive a wedge between the Danish government and its colonial subjects Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) and the Faroe Islands. It is however far more likely that Russia is just using an opportunity to gather intelligence.
None of this would be necessary if the EU and the west weren't busy commiting acts of industrial and environmental sabatoge and going whole hog supporting Nazis. The NordStream fiasco must have been seen as a giant embarassment and intel faikure on the part of Russia, given the US officials were openly hinting at attacking it somehow for months.
Is there an overlap between these guys and the "freedom for Scania" people?
Are you telling me that Scanian irredentism exists as something that's not a joke?