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.
Wagner has apparently taken full control of Bakhmut in the past few hours. https://t.me/intelslava/47884
I feel like a Bakhmut veteran with how much I've mentioned this cursed town in the last 10 months or so.
start calling it Artyomovsk and everything will feel fresh again
Prigozhin is saying it's 100% captured, the map guys think that there's still a tiny bit to go.
ukrainian government to add 3 oblasts to the municipal boundries of bakhmut, the battle goes on
sir, please step away from the lathe, or by 2026 we'll still be discussing the Battle of Bakhmut which is now the largest city on the planet covering a full quarter of Ukraine's land area
Bakhmut shouldn't have stopped at berlin.
alwayshasbeen.jpeg
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Just a couple of days ago western media was reporting Ukrainian advances and Russian retreats around Artyemovsk/Bakhmut.
My theory is they reported on Russian troops pulling back from counter attacks on the flanks as a full retreat because, y'know, western media.
Western reporting on the west is toe-curling bad and it's not just because they're doing propaganda, they're also simply just plain bad at their jobs.
After the Kinzhal strike that damaged a Patriot system in Kiev I saw a western news outlet report that a spokesperson for the Ukrainian air force had stated that "Kinzhals could not destroy Patriots" which is a hilariously absurd thing to claim. I followed the reference to a English-language Ukrainian source and read the actual statement being quoted where the spokesperson said that a single Kinzhal strike could not take out a Patriot complex as the individual launchers are too far from eachother. It's still coping to distract from the fact that multiple Kinzhals hit multiple launchers and made Kiev's air defense significantly weaker but it's not as divorced from reality as the original one.
The discrepancy between what was reported and what was said made Ukraine look worse so it is unlikely to be a a propagandistic attempt to bend reality. It's much more likely that some hack of a journalist just didn't spend the time necessary to understand the story they were reporting, either because the modern media industry has increased production quotas for journalists, making it impossible to do a good job or because they were busy tending to their cocaine habit and simply couldn't be arsed to learn about nerd stuff and pay close attention to what a non-western person was saying.
What's the next forever battle going to be?
If Russia wants to advance towards Kramatorsk along the main road (H-20), and I don't see why they wouldn't for logistics purposes, Kostiantynivka, a few miles to the southwest of Bakhmut, seems like a place of similar size. The fortifications probably aren't as built up there so it might not take quite as long (and every battle that Ukraine decides to fight like this will wear them down over time) but still almost certainly a months-long slog.
The immediate targets though will be Khromove (literally on the outskirts of Bakhmut, could even be called part of Bakhmut if you really wanted), Ivanivske, and of course, Chasov Yar. And to the north they'll probably wanna get Siversk wrapped up too.
Other than that, my money is on Kupyansk, though the Russians might not bother trying to take the part west of the Oskil river, at least not immediately.
Then again, it's entirely possible that the Russian command has entirely different ideas about what to do once Bakhmut is cleared and secured and will launch bigger attacks. Not big arrow offensives of course, we'll still be in an attrition war model I think, but the hits up near Sumy are definitely interesting. But for the immediate future, in the days and weeks to come, we might see Russia hunkering down a bit to repel the counteroffensive.
This sounds very reasonable, especially the last part about Russia chilling a bit and fortifying their lines a bit more in case the Ukrainian counter-offensive gets launched soon.
I also agree that the next major Russian move will be not in Donetsk, but on Kupyansk-Izyum-Lyman line. An assault on Sloviansk is very difficult without securing that supply line and I don't think that Russians want another Bakhmut meatgrinder slugfest by going for a frontal assault on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Silly question but haven't Ukraine had ten months to build fortifications at the next towns after Bakhmut? I don't know if that's long enough time to build something useful or if Ukraine had the manpower to do it, or even enough realism to see that they would loose Bakhmut at some point and that preparing the next battlefield would be a good idea.
Do we know anything about the fortifications in the next likely battlefields?
Yes, but they had eight years to build fortifications in Bakhmut.
Hypothetically, we should see an acceleration of the campaign once we get past the Zelensky Line because Russia will only have to overcome 10 months of fortifications, and then once they break those in presumably less than 10 months, only have to overcome 5 months of fortifications, and so on until the ability of Ukraine to resist is overcome.
'Hypothetically' being the operative word there - it's entirely possible (in fact, I think quite likely) that it won't turn out that way because Russia benefits most from attrition thus and not having to have the long logistics chains that Ukraine currently has. But that's the theory, at least, when people said that once Bakhmut is cracked then Russia can advance forwards easier (certainly not easily, just easier).
deleted by creator