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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.
Look closely at clothes in stores now, companies have largely moved from China to South Asia and South East Asia because wages in China were getting too high
Never ending chain of exploitation, I expect them to move to Africa soon enough
I buy most of my clothes on ebay, cuz its easy to find stuff that fits and I often can get good stuff for cheap, so I look at lots of listing for vintage clothes. And you can really see it: every decade or two the country, or countries, that most clothes are made in changes. I just bought a skirt suit made in Japan, so I know it's pretty old (not that there aren't clothes made in Japan anymore, but Japanese clothes, like a lot of Japanese products, are now high-end, boutique, or designer items; whereas it used to be a place known for low wages and stuff, just like China was). People in the US still think of China as the exporter of garbage cheap stuff, but they make a lot of nice stuff there now. I wonder if western Sinophobia will keep them from making the same sort of shift in perception of quality that was made towards Japan and the ROK in the past. Clothing factories seem to be some of the earliest ones to change places; I would imagine because it's easier to set up a new clothes making sweatshop that a factory making like advanced electronics or something. It really shows off the irrationality of capitalist "efficiency." Like you spend resources constructing factories, build up an experienced workforce, figure out all of the transport and logistical stuff; and then you abandon all of that and then do it again in another country because your rate of profit has fallen somewhat and you can pump it up by exploiting people harder in a new place. Only a capitalist would find this more efficient: it makes more money, but it's less efficient resource-wise to always be moving factories and training new workers and moving raw goods and finished products all over the fucking world. I have, for example, several shirts made of US grown Supima cotton (and they are advertised as being such, this is supposed to be a selling point), and they are made in Malaysia. Not trying to make some patriotic "buy US" point or anything. It's just silly that we waste all this fuel (producing greenhouse emissions too) doing things like shipping that cotton from the US to Malaysia and the shirts back to the US where I buy them. When the factory could just be fairly close to the cotton producing area lol. But the company would make less money and the shirt would cost me more, so this doesn't happen; how does money make any rational sense lol??? We're burning up the fucking planet for this shit