Image is a ball-and-stick model of a molecule of CL-20, alternatively known as hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane, taken from Wikipedia.
Much of this preamble is taken from this article.
CL-20 is the most deadly non-nuclear explosive that humanity has yet discovered, capable of generating detonation velocities and pressures higher than other military explosives like TNT, RDX, and HMX. If you have a more powerful explosive, you can make your missiles travel further and/or make them smaller. It also helps the creation of nuclear missiles, as to start the nuclear chain reaction, you need a powerful shockwave to get all the atoms in there to mingle. The problem is that it's a little too explosive, making it exceedingly difficult to not only manufacture, but transport. I mean, America can hardly transport some chemicals across the country without poisoning entire towns. Thus, it isn't really used in many known military applications.
In 1994, in China, Professor Yu Yongzhong synthesized the first CL-20 compound in his laboratory. America came along and said 'Actually, we did it first, in 1987.' The US team said that despite it being such a powerful explosive, the cost of making and testing it was too high, and the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that there wasn't really much interest in that kind of weapons arms race anymore. Production therefore fell to the wayside, while China kept at it, investing in its production and testing.
China has recently found a way to synthesize it to make it five times as shock-resistant. This shock resistance is essentially measured by dropping an object onto it and measuring the height you need to drop it from to make it explode. The previous record was 13 cm / 5 inches, whereas now it is 68 cm, or about 27 inches. US military experts already fear that China has designed its weaponry to use CL-20 and thus this will give them an advantage in missile technology.
(Also, fun fact, CL-20 is called that because it was developed in the China Lake facility in California.)
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.
Like yea, he did attempt to join in early 2000 I think. Then Clinton rejected him, nato supposedly anti Soviet alliance, not strictly Russian, and you know how Pizza hut got scam, then Putin himself got scam which is led to this cluster f*ck right now.
Not letting Russia in NATO seems like a historical cringe point. Russia in NATO would have wedded Russia to the west much more, potentially stopping this Multipolar present from happening.
I remember Stalin tried to get Soviet into nato also, but got rejected. Seem like the west truly hate the Russian and want to balkanize them
They have been trying hard to provoke Russia since Yeltsin got yeeted. NATOs existence required a hostile Russia and they have worked hard to achieve that.
I think Putin will be a fascinating character for decades, perhaps even centuries to come. He's certainly not a good person but, depending on how the multipolar moment shakes out, he's too complicated to call a strictly bad person either. He's the prime example of how people are shaped by the society they live in and the experiences they have and broadly the material conditions they are in, even up to the highest levels of power.
There's a parallel universe where the USSR doesn't collapse and he's probably some relatively high-level communist official for a while but nobody really knows who he is. There's a parallel universe where Russia joins NATO in the early 2000s and he's just another one of the dipshit reactionary leaders that we celebrate when they croak (and this also changes what China does afterwards). In our universe, he seems like a boring liberal who just wanted to vibe as a strongman leader and have fun with the oligarchs but was forced under outside pressure to a course which, well, has lead to all the consequences we see right now, some bad obviously (like a war that's displaced millions) but some good (kickstarting, with China's help, a multipolar world and also the American Empire's gradual collapse).
Whereas for most western leaders, it's hard to imagine them doing anything really fundamentally different because all their fates, when combined, are so overdetermined. Even if Biden only ends up as some investment banker, he's basically the same guy telling stories about Corn Pop with his buddies at executive meetings, and there's a clone of him who does mostly the same things he does in politics. The course of the Empire cannot be shifted, unlike with Russia. The wheel is broken and the best you could hope for is to grab an oar and change the trajectory by a few degrees this way or that.