Image is of Chinese FM Qin Gang and German FM Annalena Baerbock, in Berlin.
Conor Gallagher over at Naked Capitalism details the latest in EU idiocy - foreign ministers backed a more hardline position on China and are considering putting sanctions on Chinese companies that they accuse of supporting Russia. The ideological contagion of "you are either with us or against us" has, without a shadow of a doubt, taken root in the brains of European politicians despite whatever words fall out of Macron's mouth.
The obvious problem here is that China is the EU's biggest trading partner for goods, their second largest import market, and their third largest export market. China's manufacturing is equal to that of the US and Europe combined, outputting most pharmaceutical ingredients, processing most rare earths, manufacturing most solar power wafers, and leads the world in the clean energy market in general - important, as the EU has given up cheap energy from Russia. It is not impossible for the West to develop their own domestic alternatives, but it will take several years to do so, and the sanctions war may escalate independent of that timetable.
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.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second update is here in the comments.
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.
Huge explosion in western Ukraine, followed by a huge uptick in radiation being detected. It looks like Russia found and destroyed Ukraine’s stockpile of depleted uranium rounds that were given by the UK
This is NATO's chance to accuse Russia of nuking/dirty bombing Ukraine and enter the war - will they take the opportunity?
I think NATO knows that without a direct attack on a member there's not enough actual support for an intervention among their home populations. A war against Russia means mobilization beyond their existing standing armies. Imagine handing out draft papers while Parisians are burning down their own city.
I think NATO is also quietly terrified of their most modern equipment being publicly proven obsolete on a modern battlefield.
I'd like to believe that but honestly the equipment they're sending is "mixed" quality at best. Before even getting into the quality of the stuff keep in mind these tanks are meant for modern combined warfare i.e they're not able to do certain tasks without infantry support.
The Leopard tanks are mostly 2A4 models from the 80s, they are not inherently any better than the Soviet counterparts, and are not the most modern version. The other version is the A6 but I think they only sent like a dozen or so.
The Abrams tanks are supposedly going to be very basic/stripped down versions, at best equal to equivalent T-80/T-90s as a result.
I think the Challenger 2s I think are the most modern but the UK also sent like a dozen, to fight a war against an army with literal thousands of tanks.
Everything else is mostly the same, Ukraine just now got Patriot systems, but those are arguably not even as good as the S-300 in some ways.
Air force? By the time they get F-16s next year, it will be around another batch of 12-24 which is not even one squadron or enough for 3-4 constant sorties(in groups of 4) given at best something like 75% utilization. If their home airbase doesn't get hit with missiles constantly.
If their home airbase doesn’t get hit with missiles constantly.
Their home airbase will be kinzhal'd to rubble within a day of the last delivered aircraft landing.
F16s need a pristine runway to take off and land. They would be useless to ukraine.
And even if all they got was good and useful stuff they're getting a million different kinds of stuff. A couple of American tanks here, a handful of German tanks there, some other kind of second-hand German tank, etc. which is destined to make for a near-impossible training and logistics situation.
It's very well and good to have the latest Wunderwaffe but if you can't use it more than three times because the crew manning it are rookies at this specific model, the mechanic who is supposed to maintain it doesn't know how it work and they can only get parts for another variant of Wunderwaffe then its not going to do you much good.
Not only that, but how little of it they have and how long it will take to make more.
not enough actual support
When have bourgeois democracies ever cared about what the public wants? To say nothing of how bloodthirsty westerners tend to be and how easy it is to get them to support war.
Support the war by yelling SLAVA BANDERA from the sidelines? Very easy. Getting them to accept being handed a rifle and sent to hide in a trench from Russian artillery? Much harder.
Give them 2 days and the entire population will be ready to march to Moscow
Westerners are used to waging war without consequences. You'll be at war but the treats will keep flowing and the few westerners who actually fight in the war will still have a very low risk of getting killed. Getting people on board with that kind of war is easy.
But this would be a different kind of war. It would be WWII-style total war, not faraway gunboat diplomacy. I think it will be very difficult to get the spoilt and individualized western population to accept things like rationing or widespread conscription into a way where the event is perfectly willing and able to shoot back and kill you.
And then past Moscow. And then into Siberia. And then into the prison camps in which they'll spend the next 20 years breaking rocks.
Like all the other times Euroids have tried to invade Russia.
I’ve seen debate whether or not it creates alpha particles if detonated rather than conventionally used
It absolutely does, the explosion doesn't do anything to affect the nuclear structure of the DU. The question is to what extent the DU is turned into dust by the explosion compared to being shot at tank armor. DU dust is much more dangerous than solid DU because you can inhale it, thus giving the radiation direct access to your lungs. DU is also toxic, so being in dust form makes it easier for it to poison you.
Alpha particles are basically fine if they're outside your body (so long as you aren't holding a source of them up to your skin I guess) but very, very bad if it gets in you. If I had a big chunk of a pure alpha emitter across the room from me (and it wasn't degrading, turning into dust, etc etc) then I would be basically fine.
In wartime situations the source will inevitably break down whether you want it to or not, and enter the ground which could then enter your lungs through dust or your body if you eat food grown in the soil. At that point the toxicity might be worse than the radioactivity though.
Gamma is much less radioactive (but still fairly bad in large doses), and it's hard to block without layers and layers of lead.
moon of alabama points out that the uptick is statistically small and started the day before the strike
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/05/ukraine-sitrep-explosion-in-khmelnytsky-bakhmut-evacuation-longer-range-missiles.html
moon of alabama is such a faszinating website ,... just this one wierd oldschool blog... are there other sites like that ?
If they were bombed at location signals a day prior doesn't seem weird. Radiation emits from its source and will give of energy from there. Depending on the shielding, say lead vs iron the emission would be diminished to varying degrees. Tracking could definitely be more difficult while the sources (the ammo) are intransit.
But du rounds are depleated. So this level of radiation may be consistent with em blowing up. Still toxic but its mainly because of the same reasons led is toxic, but more so. Wich is somehow worse since its harder to get rid of.
Hot off the presses, today's article from the New York Times.
‘Approaching. Move In.’ How Ukraine Reversed the Momentum in Bakhmut
Choice quote from the article.
It is led by Colonel Biletsky, a former ultranationalist politician and co-founder of the Azov regiment, a group that was part of Ukraine’s national guard before the war and is now integrated into the country’s military forces, with little or no political bent.
Biletsky really is everywhere. I had really expected he would have been killed by now.
I still occasionally think about the Irish sesh gremlins who, in the first few months of the war, pretended to be fighting as volunteers in Ukraine by taking pictures of themselves in the woods wearing camo and wielding airsoft guns and then spent all the money people donated on hash and MDMA :rat-salute:
At their summit in Reykjavik the Council of Europe wants to make a register of all Russian war damage in Ukraine with the intent of making Russia pay reparations after the war.
The west is not even close to winning and they're already fantasising about how to make a new Versailles treaty.
Media here is creaming themselves at the possibility of this being called the "Reykjavik Declaration" :doomjak:
wait, there is more, there has been speculation for months if whether the man, the myth, the legend, Zelenskyy, would grace our humble shores with his presence. Naturally his travel plans must be kept secret so we would never have known until now.
Sadly (for them and us cringe enjoyers) he will not be here in person but will be addressing the conference in some fashion.
addressing the conference in some fashion.
It will not be Coco Channel or Giorgio Armani. It will be the brand that brought nazi heraldry into the 21st century, M-TAC.
Ukraine threatened to blow up the Druzhba oil pipeline, to which Hungary stated it would be an attack on Hungary and therefore trigger NATO’s article 5
Would be very funny to see this happen
It is not impossible for the West to develop their own domestic alternatives,
it kinda is. the USA's most recent attempt to onshore chip production ($50 billion iirc) was immediately funneled to Intel shareholders
maybe the United State needs to do some corporation disciplinings before doing protectionism.
then again, you need a functional state to do that
The corporations and their lobbyists write the legislation already, what would our Senators and Congresspeople do without pre-written legislation? It's not like their staffers can write!
Americans destroying the state that brought them to their Peak development post-war because gOvernMEnt bAD
It's hilarious to see Americans talk about war with China and reference WW2. If they had to live with ration stamps and centralized control over industry, fixed prices, and all the rest, they'd be frothing at the mouth screaming about the woke liberal communists taking over their government
It’s hilarious to see Americans talk about war with China and reference WW2
Good luck with that, China will not initiate an offensive war against USA. As a matter of fact, any chicken hawk Asian countries near China are stupid, you can look at their trade relation with China and you'll see how economic integrated they are. Any war that USA will initiate is going to be an attrition war and the USA is not good at it last time I remember (then again there are no ''winner'' in attrition war)
Big brain Americans: now that we've offshored all of our industrial capacity to China, let's start a war with our new enemy, China!
I love seeing libs on Reddit in response to "due to heavy economic engagement, a China-US war would be bad for the US" say shit like "they need us to buy their goods, it'd be much worse for them."
Hard to imagine a worldview where dollars that can't be exchanged for actual goods are more valuable than computers and steel and tools and vehicles that can't be sold for dollars. It's like a survivalist prepping for disaster with gold bullion instead of guns, medicine and food.
It might be possible for Europe and other non-American western countries to do it, but it would be enormously expensive given that energy will be chronically more expensive from now on and they're also expected to funnel wealth into military corporations so that they can face Russia in 2030 or whatever the hell they're planning
The $50 billion in direct subsidies has not been dispersed yet, it'll probably be given out gradually alongside the construction of Intel fabs in Arizona and Ohio
I still can't wrap my head around the idiocy of putting a water-hungry chip fab in a desert. It's utterly insane.
Modern semiconductor production benefits from geological and atmospheric stability. Changes in barometric pressure have effects on the refraction index of light, which comes into play when lasers transition from one media to another, eg from a glass lens to air or air to a mirror and vice versa. A storm blowing in will drastically change where a laser hits a wafer when you're measuring in nanometers, leading to dead dies. Constructing all of your machines to be air-tight pressure vessels and maintaining a standard of less than one particle per cubic foot of air will make the production tools and therefore final product extremely expensive.
Intel constructed a water treatment facility in partnership with the local water and power utility to recycle the water it uses and put it back into the ground, so at least they're doing something.
US media now claiming the hypersonic missiles were all shot down by patriots.
They are also admitting patriot launchers were destroyed in that exchange.
Their explanation is that missile debris must have landed on the launchers after they destroyed the hypersonics that definitely, absolutely, were intercepted.
:agony: :agony: :agony:
So investors who aren't doing insider trading are going to lose their shirts. Got it.
alright i read that whole thing and i have no fucking clue what he's on about.
Update to the story about Russia having found and destroyed Ukraine’s stockpile of depleted uranium rounds:
Large spikes of bismuth were detected in the air in eastern Poland, some stations measuring more than 7-10x the normal background range. Bismuth is sometimes substituted for lead in military applications, often with depleted uranium rounds. This spike is consistent with ones detected after the use of depleted uranium in Iraq.
If the US can not maintain its forces overseas anymore the logical answer to the new conditions is that the US will focus its efforts on neighbours instead.
I've previously said that I think the US military will be forced to pick a theatre and stick to it, I thought this would be China or Africa but I am increasingly leaning towards the idea it will be South America, starting with Mexico.
If it can no longer maintain 1000 bases worldwide and that kind of reach is too much effort then going after its neighbours is just really really obvious.
That's the position I've always held. The United States will scale back into another "isolationist" period where they focused more on having a vice grip on North America before slowly expanding their influence.
can i just say how i hate that its a bunch of right wing commentators who drip feed us news from the front? listening to the duran duo whining about how zelensky wasn't wearing a proper suit and tie when talking to the pope felt more insufferable than the thousand other times they've said that the problem with the germans is their extremist environmentalism.
Ergodon is actually Mac. Openly saying, “I’m playing both sides, this way I’ll always come out on top.” When that’s actually supposed to be a secret.
I do think Turkey will eventually go east. They just want to make sure they can make that decision after the Black Sea is majority Russian.
Yeah the security issues I see between Turkey and Russia are mainly Nagorno-Karabakh, the Black Sea, and Syria.
Also Libya and Subsaharan Africa in general. In Libya they support antagonistic factions, and in Africa they are security competitors.
There really is no reason for Turkiye to actually leave NATO as there's no substitute for it. While inside NATO the turks get to wage war against the interests of the greeks, the french, the russians, and so on, being a centrifuge for all sides at all times. Meanwhile BRICS and the SCO are all currently just forums for countries with conflicting interests to have a dialogue about things. Joining the SCO isn't just keeping your options open vis a vis the West, it's also a way to have a say in places where one's long time rivals do (Iran, Saudi, Russia even, it all depends on the context).
It's also important to note that Turkiye's importance towards NATO can only grow with the outcome of the Ukraine War, and grow further depending on how much much of a victory the Russians muster. Turkiye is a 'natural' marcher state for the EU and NATO. The state bureaucracies in places like Washington understand that. It's the political class that doesn't. This is just the geopolitical side. The european economies are rather invested in Turkiye itself.
Even with all the problems over the years with the US arming of Greece and denial of similar arrangements with the turks, I believe the day that Turkiye leaves NATO is only if the EU federalizes without including the turks. That would be a calamity, because if the greeks and the french have any say in it, such a state would be automatically hostile to the turks. At that point they'd need a new security arrangement stat.
Turkey isn't trying to be the Ottoman Empire any more than Russia is trying to restore the Soviet Union. Everything is driven by current day geopolitical concerns. The Libya dispute is about sea deposits: Greece's island chains and Cyprus together claim the entire sea around Turkey's coast. The euros won't go to arbitration because odds are the precedent of the jersey islands will be used. So Turkey looks out for countries in the med that are willing to partner and recognize their claims. Meanwhile France supports Greece, and with them Egypt.
I don't think Turkey will leave NATO on their own accord. If they're leaving it will be because they forced NATO into kicking them out. But most NATO members understand the strategic importance of having Turkey in their alliance rather than out. At the same time, being in NATO gives Turkey leverage over for example Russia. There's really no reason to give up that position. Stepping out of NATO would limit Turkey's broadband to persue their interests.
Even if tensions ratchet up between Turkey and Greece for example, them both being members puts a break on further escalation. Turkey can keep pushing untill other NATO members feel forced to come to a deal to save the alliance in the face of a greater threat.
Framing what is going on in Turkey in terms of them switching from West to East (not that im saying you're framing it as such) implies the Western idea of bipolar geopolitical struggle emerging, rather than a world of multipolar competition.
Agreed on all points. But hilariously, there's no mechanism in the NATO treaty to expel a member that wants to remain.
It will be "hilarious" if Turkey leaves NATO and Finland decides to keep the racist and xenophobic anti-Kurd policies Erdoğan insisted on as a precondition of joining anyway.
https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1658281863327129601
Ukrainian air defense desperately trying to take down a target. Looks like around 30 missiles. Assuming they are patriot missiles, that volley was around $120 million lol. And whatever they were trying to protect probably still got destroyed.
Air warning issued only on Kiev today, apparently. Then this happens, lots of AD missiles are fired at unknown target(s), either these missiles are capable of engaging multiple targets at once or the AD battery was firing in full panic trying to stop something. Not much is known yet, information is still coming out (photos of debris in the city from supposed Kinzhal missiles). We still don't know the nature of the battery in question, Patriot system is likely (as S-300s were reportedly running low and I bet Patriots were kept in the capital as it is the "best" AD system available). Some say the russians absolutely saturated the area with either lots of drones or slower cruise missiles from multiple vectors that allowed the Kinzhals to reach it's targets freely, there is a clear explosion in the vecinity of the AD battery anyway. Also some are super mad at the people filming the whole thing because it's giving their positions away, but this is bound to happen, it's 2023 everyone has a phone with a camera ffs.
Also some AD missiles behaved quite erratically, like very off-target.
30 patriots, 30 kinzhals. one step closer to putting Putler in the Hague!
edit: satire can no longer outpace western propaganda
He is also pretty old, he's almost 70. Entirely possible that he got something that would knock any of us on our asses but for him is even worse. Also entirely possible he was exposed to some kind of toxic substance - apparently recent images of him show him with a bandaged arm and he sounds pretty hoarse. I could see NATO being like "God fucking damn it, we were about to invade Belarus but now Russia's given them nukes. Alright, Plan B, let's try and assassinate him and take advantage of the chaos afterwards to install our puppet."
Remember Grishin dragging Chernenko out to publicly vote from his deathbed, hastening his death? Just saying there is precedent for politicians going to public outings they shouldn't and getting sick from something minor
Is there a successor ready or will Belarus be vulnerable to colour revolutions if he dies?
