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.
You get people like this on the pro-Russian side that say that the Russian army has basically already collapsed and Ukraine is preparing their final march on Vladisvostok - I'm reminded of that guy a few months ago who made similar statements. Prigozhin has no military training and is the figurehead of the Wagner group and clearly has enemies in the Russian MoD.
If Ukraine breaks through to Melitopol and beyond then I'll consider taking them seriously, but until then, this is just him throwing a temper tantrum because people insulted Wagner for being slow taking Bakhmut.
edit: okay, some of these statements are just bizarre. The Debaltsevo cauldron was one of the pivotal events that set the stage for the Minsk agreements, it wasn't a "patriotic lie". Wagner needing 80,000 shells per day minimum is an extraordinary thing to say - the entire Russian army can output like 20-40k shells per day, sometimes higher, and Ukraine only fires like 2-4k per day. What on god's green earth do you need all that artillery for? If the Russian army isn't actually on Bakhmut's flanks and they don't actually exist there, then why hasn't Ukraine been able to retake any of the territory around it even according to pro-Ukraine sources?
anyway, it looks like we're now in a situation where several people on pro-Ukraine side are saying that Ukraine is exhausted and it's unlikely that Ukraine will break through in their counteroffensive and all will soon be lost if we don't send a thousand modern tanks to them tomorrow, and we have people on the pro-Russian side saying that the entire Russian army is drunk and incompetent and we may have to accept the loss of St. Petersburg in the very near future. pretty awesome.
my prediction: the Ukrainian counteroffensive will win back enough land to keep the West in the war (possibly reaching as far as Melitopol or even beyond if shit goes really badly), and the attrition and death will continue at least until the end of the year and almost certainly longer, and there will be no dramatic explosion of the Russian army nor the Ukrainian army this year like people like Prigozhin are saying.
This is pure speculation but I get the feeling that Prigozhin sometimes makes stuff up as some weird 4D chess move (whether to rile up the hogs in Russia or try and trick the Ukrainians into doing something rash I don't know). Remember a few months ago when he was talking about how Wagner were running out of ammo and were being sidelined by the military and then suddenly was like "Oh it's fine now I spoke to someone and got it fixed"? Kinda feels similar.
Of course it could just be a tantrum as you say, he doesn't exactly seem like the most measured guy out there.
yes, exactly. until I see Ukraine actually pwning the Russians and dabbing on the miles of broken tanks and shot-down aircraft, then this just feels like those frantic emails from Democrat Party candidates like "If you don't send us $10 then we're about to LOSE this election!" and "ALL IS LOST - unless YOU help us out at the last millisecond!"
I'm not saying with absolute certainty that the Russian army isn't in dire straits, maybe the western analysts have been right this entire time and for months now Russia has been on the edge of calamity and just averting it through desperate measures, maybe Ukraine is going to win the war, but all I can do is look at the battlefield map and the list of recent events and draw conclusions, y'know? like, okay, Russia still controls upwards of 20% of Ukraine and they have for a year without massive changes in either direction aside from the Kiev pullback/retreat, and satellite images show that they've built fortifications. it seems logical that they aren't about to lose all that territory then. and, okay, it looks like there's a big artillery/aircraft difference between the two sides right now, with Russia having more of both, which would be odd for the obviously losing and about-to-collapse side to be able to field. etc etc.
like, in previous spats, Prigozhin was talking about how Wagner wasn't being given enough shells, but IIRC Ukraine was like "Uhh, there's been no reduction in shelling intensity" his rants don't actually seem to correlate to reality, and again, he almost certainly isn't commanding shit in Wagner, unless he went to a very secret military academy of which we have no knowledge of.
analysts and generals and dipshits can say as many words as they want with as much certainty as they want about the war, but until shit actually happens on the ground that grounds and confirms/denies those theories and statements then I'm not gonna put much stock in them. all they're doing is analyzing events that haven't even happened yet, and we still haven't gotten totally adequate explanations of events that have already happened.
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Sounds like a goading strategy to me. I think Russia has been pretty much maintaining radio silence through the spring while making slow grinding progress in Bakhmut. Sputnik has reported an article everyday for the past 3 or for days estimating UKR deaths around 600 per day. This seems like playing up some of the internal divisions/rivalries as a lifeline to prolong the cannon fodder. I'm not even sure if a Ukrainian offensive will occur at all or how successful it will be. One thing for sure it seems like everything is pushing towards a final desperate gambit on UKRs side and the end game will be dependent upon how that plays out.
What are the estimates of Wagner losses? Also, what is the relationship like between Putin and Prigozhin? I'm sure someone smarter and more informed about this war than me has proposed this, but if the relationship isn't good, I wonder if Putin could be trying to wear down/destroy an internal contender for power (i.e. Wagner/Prigozhin). I don't know how true the reports of Russia emptying out the prisons and sending them to the front, but annihilating your "criminal undesirables" in the process of grinding up the Ukrainian forces is probably a benefit for Putin, also.
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