19 nations want to join the BRICS organization, and the current five members of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa if you weren't previously aware) are meeting in Cape Town in early June to discuss enlarging the group. South Africa's ambassador to the group has said "Thirteen countries have formally asked to join and another six have asked informally. We are getting applications to join every day."

Some of the nations that we know about include Argentina, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Indonesia, and Iran, but it appears there are three more countries in Africa that want to join but haven't been disclosed yet (perhaps it's risky for them to publicly ask as America wouldn't be happy about it).

In other news, Russia has recently carried out one of their most powerful attacks on Ukraine to this date, with bomber planes flying seemingly freely and without interception from Ukrainian air defense and missiles and drones raining down on the country. A couple days before, we saw footage of Russian Lancet drones blowing up Ukrainian S-300 systems on the front line, presumably there to try and counter Russian air power when Ukraine launches its counteroffensive, which some have speculated will begin on May 9th, which is Victory Day in Russia, for the propaganda effect.

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.

May 1st's update is here in the comments.

May 3rd's update is here in the comments.

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.

  • CyborgMarx [any, any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Poland wants reparations from Germany and then from Moscow, the Financial Times says.

    In the opinion of the publication, Poland remains "the main hyena of Europe." In October, the Poles filed a formal lawsuit against Germany for reparations of 1.3 trillion euros for damages and losses incurred during World War II.

    Berlin categorically rejected the claim, pointing out that the issue had been settled in the 1950s with the government of Communist Poland. But that doesn't stop the Poles.

    Warsaw, however, is not demanding reparations from Russia. As Polish Secretary of State Marcin Przydacz said in an interview, Poles have a civilizationally different attitude toward Berlin and Moscow.

    "With Berlin, we can start a dialogue, but with Putin, it is a different civilization." "As soon as we achieve success with Germany, the next step is to start such a discussion with another oppressor," the Polish politician fantasizes.

    lmao Poland

    • jackmarxist [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Ethnotstates and being absolutely fucking entitled. Name a better duo

    • mkultrawide [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The Czechs should sue Poland over Trans-Olza.

    • trompete [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      They're correct in demanding reparations from Germany. Fucking Germans pretend like they dealt with their past and feel extra smug about it, but each time someone wants some material justice they're like: We already said we're sorry! What's the big deal? NO HANDOUTS YOU BUMS!

        • daisy
          ·
          2 years ago

          Churchill is such an infuriatingly hard-to-hate figure. He did a lot of awful shit in his life. But he also rallied Britain to hate nazis, which in the 1930s was a PR challenge of the highest order.

          • emizeko [they/them]
            ·
            2 years ago

            hard-to-hate

            he has some spicy quotes that will help with this. real "exterminate the brutes" stuff

        • Vncredleader
          ·
          2 years ago

          He referred to them as "groveling in villainy"

    • Vncredleader
      ·
      2 years ago

      During the Munich crisis as Poland helped the Nazis destroy Czechoslovakia

      If Bonnet had any doubts that the Polish ambassador was not accurately representing his government’s views, these were quickly put to rest by Field Marshal >Edward Smigly-Rydz. He told the French ambassador in Warsaw, Leon Noel, that the Poles considered Russia, no matter who governed it, to be “ Enemy No. 1 . ”

      “ If the German remains an adversary, he is not less a European and a man of order; for Poles, the Russian is a barbarian, an Asiatic, a corrupt and poisonous element, >with which any contact is perilous and any compromise, lethal.” According to the Polish government, aggressive action by France, or the movement of Soviet troops, >say even across Romania, could prompt the Poles to side with Nazi Germany. This would suit many Poles, reported Noel: they “ dream of conquests at the expense of >the USSR, exaggerating its difficulties and counting on its collapse.” France had better not force Poland to choose between Russia and Germany, because their >choice, according to Noel, could easily be guessed.25 As Daladier put it to the Soviet ambassador, “Not only can we not count on Polish support, but we have no faith >that Poland will not strike [us] in the back.” Polish loyalty was in doubt even in the event of direct German aggression against France.26

      :poland-cool:

    • batsforpeace [any, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      there's also the local politics aspect to this, there are elections coming up this year in Poland, I heard the Law and Justice party ran a poll and the numbers were good for this issue (apparently better than their regular 30% base support), so they are now deploying it right before the elections, there was also a media blitz recently about who's pro-Pope John Paul II and who's not, which also yielded them a positive bump in the polls