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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.
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.
Almost all of Ukraine's industry is in the donabass it's something like 70-80% of their gdp came from eastern Ukraine.
Isn't Western and Middle Ukraine the part with all the famous soil? And Eastern Ukraine also has agriculture, but it's more focused on processing raw material and producing industrial material. Also supposedly there's a bunch of natural gas in Ukraine, but I have literally no idea where it's located.
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Yeah exactly the rest of the country is farm land and a few cities that do tech stuff and agb processing. All of the equipment manufacturing is in the east.
The grain deal issues messed with distribution
Not only is it 20% unemplolyment, but it's estimated that at least 15-30% of the country has fled, their economy is completely fucked.
And both of those were issues before the war even started too.
Don't worry, nafoids on r/ukraine have said that Ukrainian economy will jump 5000x as soon as the war is over because every company in the world will move their operations to Ukraine. All corruption will be ended and every Russian will be eliminated. A true haven of the white world.
Hey now it's not just r/ukraine, those freaks have taken over r/antiwar too
Meanwhile even the people happy for the hollowing out of what's left by neoliberalism are trying to beg the vultures not to pick the corpse clean because it would tie into Russian narratives in a thread I linked the other day.
If Zelensky annoys the US too much he might end up like Ngo Diem
You see 20% unemployed people, Slava Ukraini Zelensky sees 20% mine probes.
An existential threat to their Nazi government I think its worth noting, a war that could have ended 14 months ago if that exact Nazi government wasn't so unhinged.
They spend the last decades letting turn their industry into rubbish, like they could have been the third largest industrial economy inside europe, another evidence that Ukrainian independence was a bad idea.