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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
Really interesting, thank you for literally doing the homework!
No problem, I mainly did it to sate my own curiousity and I figured people here would be interested too! I'm also curious how the German papers of the time covered the same events, but I'm stymied by not speaking German and also being an ocean away from any public libraries with German newspaper archives.
New homework assignment just dropped
@ThomasMuentzner@hexbear.net
If the state couldn’t control media during a war, they’d just pass a law to do it by force. The fact that they haven’t done so tells you everything about the situation necessary.
Not adding citations gets you sent to the gulag.
It was all from the July 1916 editions of the Toronto Globe and Mail. I'll do an effort post later with citations and specific examples