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.
Their home airbase will be kinzhal'd to rubble within a day of the last delivered aircraft landing.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
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.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
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 ?
deleted by creator
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.
Did that happen on Saturday by chance?
:PIGPOOPBALLS: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke:
lol owned