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Well, Prigozhin gets to live in Belarus instead of being on the wrong end of an Iskander, Wagner forces (in Ukraine at least) will probably get integrated into the Russian military, and SHOOOOIIGUUU and GEERRASSIMOOVV get to keep their jobs. Putin looks like a weak leader but at least things are intact. Also, the front in Ukraine hasn't broken down or anything.
I imagine a ton of things have happened behind the scenes that we either will never know about or will only slowly come to know about in the future.
About as happy an ending to the Wagner saga as we could hope for given the nature and historical horror stories of mercs. Or is it the end...? (Yes. Hopefully.)
And I have it on good authority that Stalin is currently looking down on this situation from heaven and incessantly swearing at these motherfuckers for what they've done to his country.
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 and only update is here, because I am on my regularly scheduled week-long break that I forgot about until now given all that's going on. Next update will be next Wednesday.
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.
All this coverage of the ukrainian counter offensive made me curious how previous failed offensives have been covered, specifically the Battle of the Somme in 1916, so I took a trip down to my local public library (we love our librarians!) to poke through their newspaper archives since the br*tish papers all want me to pay for access (bastards!).
Turns out nothing ever changes. Allied (british, french, etc) casualties are downplayed if ever mentioned at all, German casualties are described as "fields full of dead germans", "tremendous losses for the Boche", capturing a thin strip of land or a single village was lauded as the next step to winning the war, and you even had "feel good" stories about blinded soldiers beating a college team in a rowing race. I also came across an article that claimed german gunners were chained to their guns to prevent them from running away, which actually comes from reports of allied soldiers finding dead germans with a sling system that made moving machine guns easier that they misinterpreted/twisted to serve as propaganda for the homefront. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Also beside the point, but the humour section was either indecipherable without researching what the joke was supposed to be or just a joke about drunk irishmen. Oh, and there was one anti-car joke which I found interesting, I'll post it here
Mendicant(Beggar,someone down on their luck)- Sir, I have paralysis, six children to support, my wife is sick, and we are about to be dispossessed!
Stalled motorist- Piffle! Did you ever try to run a second-hand automobile?
Edit: Effortpost here
Night's looking even more intense than the one yesterday in
Personally I am very far from Nanterre and from my window I'm hearing the supermarket next door being dismantled ✊
BREAKING: President @JoeBiden says Russian President Vladimir Putin "is clearly losing the war in Iraq" WATCH
https://twitter.com/simonateba/status/1674059997414563843
so glad nothing came out of the wagner thing, otherwise i'd have to admit i was wrong
I'm glad we don't have a pmc controlling the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
You're telling me like 25000 mercenary guys aren't gonna take on the russian military?!
Ukraine's counteroffensive is going so well that the recapture of a village with under 100 people is significant enough to go on Wikipedia's current events page rn :)
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Took a quick pic of this dude who keeps ringing my doorbell and ranting and raving to me about my lawn being overgrown. Fuck off dude, don't care.
Inspired by @FALGSConaut's earlier comment, here's a selection of newspaper articles published in the weeks prior to the Fall of France in the Second World War.
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Can add citations later if anyone's interested
Lukashenko is so funny to me. Just seems to always make it through despite everyone not seeming to like him.
LULA: They accuse us of being communists, as if we would be offended by that. We are not offended.
We would be offended if they called us Nazis, neofascists, terrorists. But never a communist, a socialist. That doesn't offend us. It makes us proud many times. And many times we know that we deserve to be called that."
so, when is he getting a Nobel peace prize by stopping a civil war by using his 100 speech skill?
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Soviet boomer to soviet boomer communication
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im just going to imagine they called eachother сука during the whole call
Me getting ready for another day of being called a Jewish T slur on Russian Telegram to find combat footage of people dyingSomething different from the usual war talk:
The BBC is running a sob story about the 19-year old that died in the Titanic sub, and shitlibs are eating it up. Ironically however, it also serves as a perfect display of billionaire decadence:
Teenager Suleman Dawood, who died in the Titan submersible, took his Rubik's Cube with him because he wanted to break a world record, his mother has told the BBC.
The 19-year-old applied to the Guinness World Records and his father, Shahzada, who also died, had brought a camera to capture the moment. Speaking of her son, Mrs Dawood said Suleman loved the Rubik's Cube so much that he carried it with him everywhere, dazzling onlookers by solving the complex puzzle in 12 seconds.
"He said, 'I'm going to solve the Rubik's Cube 3,700 metres below sea at the Titanic'."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66015851
As most people here probably know, Guinness doesn't actually keep track of real world records, it really only serves as vanity awards for rich people who pay them an exorbitant sum of money.
Also, wouldn't someone from Guinness have had to be present on the sub as well, to actually witness it happening?
Bonus points for the 19 year old being portrayed with the mental faculties of a 10 year old child.
One thing that I've seen little comment on during this war is Ukraine's terrible performance on the home front. They're in the middle of an existential war and they're running an unemployment rate of 20%. Ukraine is almost completely dependent on foreign aid to fight this war, this in a country that inherited massive Soviet industrial development, including a disproportionate share of military industry. They're turning Kiev into another Saigon or Kabul.
