Image is of Russian mercenary Frodonov Bagginsky, standing in the ruins of Bakhmut after the battle concluded.
After nearly a year of intense fighting for the town of Bakhmut, Russian forces have finally reached full control.
While tens of thousands of lives have ended in the area in and around Bakhmut, perhaps almost as interesting as the battle itself has been the war of narratives over it. The state propagandists in the West have spent a lot of effort muddying the waters about the battle for the city, to the extent that the two sides now live in effectively separate realities.
If you are pro-Ukraine, the reality you observe is that this was an excellent maneuver by the Ukrainians - as the Russians send in their troops in human wave attacks armed only with shovels, you have achieved a 1:7 casualty ratio in your favor. You have fundamentally weakened the Russian army because, for some inscrutable reason, they have decided to attack one of the strongest parts of your front line - this reveals the inherent stupidity of the Ruskies. Let them have the city for all you care - it has zero importance and you will soon recapture it. You are, in fact, one step closer to winning the war - far from losing it.
If you are pro-Russian, the reality you observe is that this was an excellent maneuver by the Russians. By utilizing your massive artillery advantage over the enemy side, sometimes achieving over ten times the number of shells fired on any given day, you can easily attrit enemy forces and you have done so, achieving a 1:7 casualty ratio in your favor. As Bakhmut is a central city in the fortification line, Ukraine has no choice but to defend it with all their strength, which allowed you to create a cauldron which has been the death of tens of thousands of troops, at the expense of only mercenaries. The logistical links that capturing the city has both created for you and severed for the enemy will make future campaigns easier, and you are now capable of advancing into territory that hasn't spent the last eight years being fortified by all NATO has to offer. You are, in fact, one step closer to winning the war - far from losing it.
While I would love to be a very smart enlightened centrist and go "Well, both sides have a point here..." all evidence I can discern points to the Russian position and away from the Ukrainian one. When Zelensky went to the US and spoke before Congress earlier this year, he said:
To ensure Bakhmut is not just a stronghold that holds back the Russian Army, but for the Russian Army to completely pull out, more cannons and shells are needed. If so, just like the Battle of Saratoga, the fight for Bakhmut will change the trajectory of our war for independence and for freedom.
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.
This week's third 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.
Buildings can be rebuilt. Ukraine were already shelling Donbas for 8 years. Nothing has changed since Russia got involved except the speed of the dying and destruction and that now it is the nazis dying instead of people who refused to be ruled by nazis and have to abandon their culture.
When you blow up the regional water treatment plant and everyone in town gets dysentery and cholera, fixing the plant doesn't magically undo all the damage from the epidemic.
Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?
You say that like Ukraine hasn't been doing this in Donbas for years. Some of the first cease fire breaches after the second Minsk agreement happened at a water treatment plant. All the things you are worried about were already going on before Feb '22. Russia is trying to stop civilians from being killed by nazis and if that means the have to destroy buildings the nazis are hiding in so be it.
Russia specifically didn't do massive airstrikes against infrastructure until after Ukraine's suicide truck bomb on the Crimea bridge. Russia has gone further to protect and evacuate civilians than any nation in the history of forever.
Stopping nazis is always the right thing to do. Stop trying to say otherwise or I'll just assume your a nazi sympathizer.
Ukraine shouldn't be bombing Donbas either. Neither side should be bombing. No bombing. Bombing bad. Do not bomb. I am firmly opposed to bombing.
This is the same tired argument the US made in Iraq and Israel made in Lebanon. "Oh sure, we did cause a bit of collateral damage, but only because they were hiding the hardware really close to the health care. So that flaming wreck of a hospital doesn't count."
The Russians didn't initially target bridges or power plants or other public infrastructure while they were confident of occupying territory. But after they stalled out and experienced resistance and push back, they decided the utilities they couldn't control needed to be destroyed. That's fine, in so far as its a sound military decision. But its also abominable, in so far as every military decision is inevitably a wretched waste of life and livelihoods for some marginal advancement of military ends.
Replace Nazis with Terrorists, and you're just doing :us-foreign-policy: all over again.
You don't need to level half of Ukraine to "stop the nazis". And nothing about this war has mitigated White Nationalism in Europe. No more than the European powers obliterating each other in WW1 mitigated white supremacy a century ago.
The mass immiseration, extensive destruction of infrastructure, and flood of weapons into Eastern Europe is only going to further bloodshed across the continent into the next decade. Perhaps the next generation. Perhaps even the next century.
These wars will do to Europe what our endless fucking around in the Middle East has done to Iran and Iraq and Saudi Arabia. It will turn the region into a nightmare of military dictatorships and ideologically justified genocide.
Reddit moment
Go anywhere in the world and you can find someone that someone else thinks deserves bombing.
Bombing still bad.
Violence is absolutely justified in some circumstances, including bombing.
To be fair, I don't think Russia's reason for war has anything to do with Nazis in Ukraine, but I'm still not shedding any tears for the Azov battalion.
You can argue the finer points of ACAB all day long. But there's no such thing as a Bomb That Only Kills Nazis. You drop heavy ordinance on a city block and you're going to cause collateral damage. You're going to hit kids. You're going to hit the infirm. You're going to disrupt municipal utilities that everyone in the area need to survive.
There's definitely some geopolitical angle to this that amounts to Ukrainian Ultra-Nationalists wanting to do a genocide on Russians. And Putin's URF has both real physical and ideological stakes in a United Russia, including all the corner cases in Ossetia and Donatsk and wherever else that large populations of Russians exist.
But in the same way that the US firebombing of Tokyo and the '79 Chinese invasion of Vietnam and the English invasion of the Falklands was wildly over the line, the continuous 15 month terror bombing of the whole of Ukraine has vastly outstripped whatever social mandate Russian leadership thought it had when this thing started.
"Ah, but we killed a few Nazis along the way!" isn't any kind of excuse for killing tens of thousands of civilians and displacing millions more.
The war in Ukraine has been remarkably restrained so far, actually. The fact that normal life is possible is Kiev should be testament to this. It's absolutely incomparable to WWII or Vietnam scale bombing.
Frontline cities have been ruined, sure, but given the slow speed of the advance, civilians should have had plenty of time to evacuate in most cases.
I haven't seen anything material to back this up.
Normal life isn't possible. They're suffering artillery fire on a daily basis. This is like saying the Nazis were remarkably restrained towards the British during Operation Sealion.
Yes. They aren't inflicting as much damage as two of the most nightmarish aerial terror campaigns on human history. They've successfully cleared that particular bar.
No duh. But who is gonna stop the bombing? If Russia didn't get involved Ukraine wouldn't stop the bombing until all the ethnic Russian Ukrainians were dead. When Russia wins the bombing will stop.
No. USA hit Iraq with massive airstrikes before they even set foot in the country. It was called "shock and awe." stop making up lies.
They have the fucking black sun on their uniforms. Fuck off :LIB:
Removed by mod
No it hasn't, wtf?! Are you seriously that ignorant of the fact that Ukraine has continually been shelling Donetsk from fortified cities like Avdeeka (with western supplied artillery) for the entire length of the conflict?
Criticize Russia if you want for them being unable to fully stop the shelling of civilian areas of Donetsk City after like 2 years of war, but don't fucking act like this is a solved problem
lie. There is shelling coming from Avdiivka into Donetsk City all the time. Cluster bombs of petal mines are constant.
This is just splitting hairs. Obviously peace is always temporary.
You've been reading too much WAPO ant NYT.
You are literally standing up for nazis now. Nazi Ideoligy is a existential threat to any sane person. They believe that everyone not like them are not real humans and should die or be slaves. Killing a nazi is always self defence because they would kill other people given the chance. (not you though you are safe because you stand up for them) Fuck you nazi defender.