The image is of Russians in Rostov climbing up a Wagner tank.
New thread's preamble:
What a mess. The amount of information going around is hard to determine, but we know with relative certainty:
- Wagner forces are in Rostov near the Defence Ministry building and are fortifying it; the Russian army and Chechens are en route
- A/several Wagner column is moving from Rostov to Moscow, and along the way Russia is setting up barriers and blocking roads, but it seems like Wagner is spreading out through western Russia wherever they can go.
- Prigozhin has no support from any internal force that we currently know of.
update: Lukashenko has saved Putin's ass. At least, that's the current narrative I'm going with - further analysis will probably change perceptions of the situation.
Old thread's preamble:
Mali's military government - which overthrew the old military government last year - has called on the UN to withdraw its peacekeeping forces in the MINUSMA program (the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali), which is the third largest peacekeeping force in the world. It was established in 2012 in the wake of the Tuareg Rebellion, in which the northern half the country, calling itself Azawad, began a fight for independence from the southern side.
The "official" fighting was over relatively quickly - the Malian military, with the help of France, retook most of the country in a year or two. But insurgencies continue to plague the region, with local militias and Islamic State jihadists taking advantage of the chaos. The idea behind the UN mission is to stabilize the situation and patrol the area - this has made it the second deadliest mission so far.
After a decade of not much progress being made, first the French pulled out in August 2022 after anti-French protests inside the country, and now the MINUSMA force is being asked to pull out after similar protests. The Russian UN ambassador has said:
“The real issue is not the number of peacekeepers but the functions, and one of the key tasks for the government of Mali is fighting terrorism, which is not provided for in the mandate of the blue helmets,”
Additionally, MINUSMA released a report last year stating that the Malian government (with the help of "foreign military elements" of which the implication is the Wagner Group) has accelerated civilian killings and human rights abuses, which hasn't made the mission more likeable to the government, I would imagine.
Update on the situation in Mali:
The rebel coalition in the north, the CSP-PSD (Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development - man, this sounds like it was named in a Washington DC office), has said that if the UN mission is pulled out as the military government is demanding, then this would be a "fatal blow" to the peace accord and threaten regional stability. The coalition previously withdrew from the negotiating table back in December as they grew impatient with the two successive military governments, and it's possible that more active fighting will continue in Mali soon. MINUSMA's mandate runs out on June 30th and if it isn't renewed by then, we may see an orderly withdrawal of UN forces taking about a year, leaving Mali by itself (and, I suppose, the Wagner Group).
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[(https://hexbear.net/comment/3553612) 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.
RU-aligned forces have used a second remote tank stuffed full of explosives as a demining tool. Apparently they're really going for it with this idea. I can't see any actual troops in this video.
https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1671182515737092097
Here's my post from 2 days ago on the previous time this happened. https://hexbear.net/comment/3544875
One of the benefits of the Soviets making like 60k T-54/55 tanks is that you can just... do stuff like this. There's plenty more tanks where that came from! Turns out - quantity does have a quality of its own. Reminds me of that (admittedly apocryphal, but it gets the vibe across) story about NASA spending millions to develop a fancy space pen, and the Soviets just using a pencil.
And once again, the Cold War era Soviet design methodology is proven right - the NATO wunderwaffe got blown up just as well as any other piece of equipment, and the Ukrainian offensive petered out after like a few days, while the Russians, with their massive stockpiles of equipment, can just keep shooting artillery and doing shit like this.
The Soviets used a grease pencil, basically a crayon. You don't want graphite floating around in a spaceship, it's both electrically conductive and flammable.
You may also be interested in the news story I'm about to post in here. It's about the quantity of artillery shells Germany has left and how long it will take it to make more.
that story is indeed apocryphal. both sides used grease pencils like another poster mentioned. but have you heard the inversion of that story? a courageous and patriotic entrepeneur who owned a pen factory developed a fancy pen just for NASA! and didn't charge no one for it.___
@mkultrawide@hexbear.net, earlier you suggested using remote-controlled decoy tanks. It looks like somebody listened and improved on your idea.
https://hexbear.net/comment/3519720
Oho
lmao literally just the Cyclops Remote Demolition Vehicle from 40k
That could have been inspired by either the Nazi goliath tracked mine or the Soviet remote-operated tele-tank. Both from WW2.
Everything old is new again.
seems to me that finding a way past minefields without too many people being killed in the process is the problem that both sides have gotta solve to end this war, hopefully this works
deleted by creator
This is my idea! I talked about this here as a joke!
I could see someone in some position of authority on the Russian side having found us and stayed around to lurk, Hexbear is one of the only places on the English speaking internet that isn't rabidly anti-Russian after all
I wonder if they would be willing to do an AMA lol
this kind of stuff was what i hoped they would be using the t55s for when we first heard about them, but then the discourse shifted to assault guns and i was quietly disappointed. really wanna see like 20 of these guys clearing a field all at once
wonder why they blow them up so big at the end though, from a maximalist position it makes sense but under normal circumstances i can't see any of these guys actually being able to make it to the objective.
Huh... I'd have figured that deminer droids would have mine rollers or plows or in the worst case a makeshift dozer blade on the front. Something like the M1 Panther.
Wouldn't have thought that turning them into rolling MICLIC's would have been a first choice.