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.
Other smaller Euro News:
There were elections for the Landtag in the Bundesland Salzburg (Austria) and the 'traditional parties' basically fell apart the rightwing-conservative ÖVP lost 7% to the even righter FPÖ while on the rest the SPÖ (Soc Dems), Greens (Green Centrists) and NEOS (neoliberals) all lost a ton to the KPÖ (Communists). KPÖ went from 0.41% during the last election to 11.66% which now makes them the 4th largest political party in the Landtag. It seems that the reason for their incredible result is mainly the unholy alliance between ÖVP AND SPÖ/GREENS/NEOS as well as campaigning on wages and rents. (Hey maybe some other communist parties in other german speaking countries could do that who knows could end well)
Also surveys put KPÖ gains at 4-6% so pretty big upset.
This is somewhat meaningful because this year is also Austrian federal election time so the KPÖ could pick up a few seats especially given that the SPÖ is in a terrible state at the moment.
Edit: Graphic to make it a bit clearer
Rare Austrian W
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:sicko-wholesome:
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Red Salzburg is not a thing I ever expected to see.
Love the city though. Weird fashion vibes that I can only describe as "Trachtencore" though.
Fun Salzburg fact KPÖ got 20% of the votes in the city proper so uh yeah
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AFAIK they also did very well in the Salzburg city local elections a while back. Basically their strategy was to be as close as possible to the everyday issues of working class citizens. Rather than fancy marketing campaigns they have done a lot of mutual aid and solidarity work with the idea being that the best way to show that you want to improve things for workers is to actually use whatever resources you do have to improve things.
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I know people from Austria and their general opinion is that the party is similar to the old Austrian Austromarxist tendency in its use of "Hard Reformism". Get into power electorially and then use worker power to prevent backlash against Socialist transition
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Absolutely would be neat to get the input from an Austrian comrade on this but also I don't think redditors are a reliable source for what is communist and what isn't, most likely they found themselves to be agreeing with them on stuff like wages and rent and so on and thought to themselves "I like the stuff they are talking about so they aren't the tankies". I see that 0,4% in the last election and to me that sounds less like a 'moderate leftist party' but who knows. And the denouncing BDS I could see claims of anti-semitism to be much more damaging in austria. I'd hope that they are good but who knows.