On Tuesday and Wednesday, this year's NATO summit will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania, in a grand meeting of some of the most awful ghouls currently populating the planet
Despite strong efforts and words from Ukraine, membership is still very unlikely to be forthcoming and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Sweden might not get membership for a while either, as Erdogan continues to play both sides off each other, but who can truly say.
All of this is in the wake of Biden announcing the delivery of cluster bombs to Ukraine, as he admits that they are running out of other munitions to send, ensuring that Ukraine, its people, and its children - the ones that remain, anyway - will continue to suffer for many, many generations to come. Cluster bombs have, I believe, already been used in the conflict, but now will presumably be used at a higher rate. The leader of Cambodia, a country that is a major victim of US cluster bombing, has said:
"It will be the worst danger for the Ukrainians for decades or even centuries if those cluster bombs are used," Hun Sen said.
"I know for sure that Cambodia is small and weak, and our voice is weightless, but with our pity towards the people of Ukraine, I call on the U.S. president, the provider, and the Ukrainian president, the recipient, not to use cluster bombs in this war because the real victims will be civilians, especially the Ukrainian ones," he said.
What a perfect exemplification of the conflict as a whole. Millions of Ukrainians will be thrown into the inferno, entirely disposable in the eyes of the West, so long as we burn some Russians in the fire.
The suffering is the point.
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 in the comments.
This week's third update is here in the comments.
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.
Please tell me that isn’t real. Humane cluster bomb? What does it do declare the children on the playground as enemy combatants first?
They claim only a couple percent of them don't explode when expected, so the amount of live ordinance being left around will be much smaller. Good ol' NATO, fighting a "CLEAN war". 😩
I'm glad I haven't looked hard enough to find out what their take on depleted uranium is.
The fail rate is going to be absurd. They haven’t been allowed to maintenance since Obama’s first term.
I don’t know if this makes more or less dangerous.
Now, now. Be nice. I'm sure since the Iron
Dome'sSieve's "90%+ success rate" the arms manufacturers who want to sell the weapons—and the bloodthirsty fascists who want to use them—have turned over a new leaf and are being completely honest about how great their products are.