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

Want to contribute?

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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.

  • puff [comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Scary thought: what if socialism is not the socio-economic mode of production that transforms capitalist states into communist states, but the mode of product that transforms feudalist states into capitalist states in countries that didn't have a capitalist industrial revolution? stalin-stressed

    • wheresmysurplusvalue [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      There are/were many kinds of socialisms, but for a scientific Marxist socialism, the point is always to develop something beyond capitalism. Can't find a more succinct passage in Marx but here's something from the grundrisse:

      The bourgeois economists who regard capital as an eternal and natural (not historical) form of production then attempt at the same time to legitimize it again by formulating the conditions of its becoming as the conditions of its contemporary realization; i.e. presenting the moments in which the capitalist still appropriates as not-capitalist – because he is still becoming – as the very conditions in which he appropriates as capitalist. These attempts at apologetics demonstrate a guilty conscience, as well as the inability to bring the mode of appropriation of capital as capital into harmony with the general laws of property proclaimed by capitalist society itself. On the other side, much more important for us is that our method indicates the points where historical investigation must enter in, or where bourgeois economy as a merely historical form of the production process points beyond itself to earlier historical modes of production. In order to develop the laws of bourgeois economy, therefore, it is not necessary to write the real history of the relations of production. But the correct observation and deduction of these laws, as having themselves become[1] in history, always leads to primary equations – like the empirical numbers e.g. in natural science – which point towards a past lying behind this system. These indications [Andeutung], together with a correct grasp of the present, then also offer the key to the understanding of the past – a work in its own right which, it is to be hoped, we shall be able to undertake as well.[2] This correct view likewise leads at the same time to the points at which the suspension of the present form of production relations gives signs of its becoming – foreshadowings of the future. Just as, on one side the pre-bourgeois phases appear as merely historical, i.e. suspended presuppositions, so do the contemporary conditions of production likewise appear as engaged in suspending themselves and hence in positing the historic presuppositions for a new state of society.

      (hope theoryposting is ok for the mega, it'd be cool to see more of it and I feel you all are much better read than me..)

      1. Having themselves become = having themselves undergone the process of becoming, as indicated on pp. 459–60. ↩︎

      2. On 22 February 1858, Marx wrote to Lassalle that he was planning three works: (1) a critique of the economic categories or the system of bourgeois economy critically presented, (2) a critique and history of political economy and socialism, and (3) a short historical sketch of the development of economic relations or categories (Marx-Engels Selected Correspondence, Moscow n.d., p. 125). Marx referred here to the third work, which he never produced in a completed form. Pages 459–514 of the present edition would no doubt have formed part of it. ↩︎

    • Sinister [none/use name, comrade/them]B
      ·
      2 years ago

      Wow that’s some strong internalized Bolshephobia you have there, might want to checkt that out. But anyways according to OG Marxist theory, countries need to pass through capitalism first and then reach socialism. So socialist leaders in feudal countries would have needed to build up the productive forces first before transitioning to socialism.

    • solaranus
      ·
      1 year ago

      deleted by creator

    • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Isn't this exactly the thesis of Branko Milanović's book Capitalism, Alone? It's honestly well researched, I have my problems with the book but Milanović is a great writer. It explores that idea in great detail, probably worth a read.

      • TreadOnMe [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        It is, but the problem is that something has to subsume capitalism as the primary mode of production, unless we actually assume global capitalism is the end of history. This seems unlikely as capitalism requires empire to enforce it's hegemony, but also actively dissolves the state capacity for empire through it's obsession with 'market forces'.

        According to a strict reading of Marx, whatever that mode of production is that subsumes captialism, will be communism. I have a feeling it will be inevitably be some form of 'industry without empire', either that or we will actually blow ourselves up. However, socialism is absolutely the only way to industrialize feudalist states within an existing capitalist hegemony, which, in a capitalist hegemony, inevitably trend towards a capitalist mode of production. The key is what happens when a system comes about that is more efficient than capitalist hegemony, and we are seeing little hints of what that looks like within both China and Russia.

      • solaranus
        ·
        1 year ago

        deleted by creator

        • Farman [any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I havent read the book. But i have read so many of his economic history articles because he introduced a useful concept.... and is easy to read.

          Most of his data is made up. And sometimes it ends up contradicting itself. He often quotes angus maddison wich is not only made up its made up in a way that it often ends up being horribly wrong.

          • solaranus
            ·
            1 year ago

            deleted by creator