back in my map era, we're ukrainemaxxing right now
Declarations of the imminent doom of Ukraine are a news megathread specialty, and this is not what I am doing here - mostly because I'm convinced that whenever we do so, the war extends another three months to spite us. Ukraine has been in an essentially apocalyptic crisis for over a year now after the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive, unable to make any substantial progress and resigned to merely being a persistent nuisance (and arms market!) as NATO fights to the last Ukrainian. In this context, predicting a terminal point is difficult, as things seem to always be going so badly that it's hard to understand how and why they fight on. In every way, Ukraine is a truly shattered country, barely held together by the sheer combined force of Western hegemony. And that hegemony is weakening.
I therefore won't be giving any predictions of a timeframe for a Ukrainian defeat, but the coming presidency of Trump is a big question mark for the conflict. Trump has talked about how he wishes for the war to end and for a deal to be made with Putin, but Trump also tends to change his mind on an issue at least three or four times before actually making a decision, simply adopting the position of who talked to him last. And, of course, his ability to end the war might be curtailed by a military-industrial complex (and various intelligence agencies) that want to keep the money flowing.
The alignment of the US election with the accelerating rate of Russian gains is pretty interesting, with talk of both escalation and de-escalation coinciding - the former from Biden, and the latter from Trump. Russia very recently performed perhaps the single largest aerial attack of Ukraine of the entire war, striking targets across the whole country with missiles and drones from various platforms. In response, the US is talking about allowing Ukraine to hit long-range targets in Russia (but the strategic value of this, at this point, seems pretty minimal).
Additionally, Russia has made genuine progress in terms of land acquisition. We aren't talking about endless and meaningless battles over empty fields anymore. Some of the big Ukrainian strongholds that we've been spending the last couple years speculating over - Chasiv Yar, Kupiansk, Orikhiv - are now being approached and entered by Russian forces. The map is actually changing now, though it's hard to tell as Ukraine is so goddamn big.
Attrition has finally paid off for Russia. An entire generation of Ukrainians has been fed into the meat grinder. Recovery will take, at minimum, decades - more realistically, the country might be permanently ruined, until that global communist revolution comes around at least. And they could have just made a fucking deal a month into the war.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
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 all socially reactionary. 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 ~ A 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. Produces interesting and useful maps.
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 Telegram Channels:
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.
this could be cope but i still think no one (not even america or the uk) wants to start a nuclear war over fucking ukraine
At this point who knows? Plus the American government is in chaos and the POTUS has dementia but no one in government is willing to invoke the 25th amendment and replace him with someone who remembers that it's not 1983.
From a materialist perspective, what matters is whether Capital can flow wherever it wants. Or more precisely, through what means can the contradictions of Capital be resolved. Lenin laid out that imperialist war is imminent due to the inevitable expansion of finance (monopoly) capitalism.
This is an objective process. If the Dark God of Free Market - Capital - calls for one billion human beings to be sacrificed, then it will have to be obeyed by the Priests and Priestesses of Neoliberalism who comprise the dominant sect of the Free Market of our age.
Our goal as Marxists is to use our human agency to reshape the material conditions such that the contradictions of Capital do not come to the point where nuclear war is imminent. However, since there is no Marxist movement left, war is imminent. What we don’t know and can’t know is whether it will turn nuclear and destroy the human civilization altogether.
You know, I always used to dismiss your warning of a tactical nuke being dropped in the next x years as pure nonsense. Guess I was totally wrong on that one.
Just remember it wasn't a vacuum prediction. There was also fearmongering about a terrorist attack on the Olympics too.
If you make every borderline conspiracy theory prediction eventually one may be correct.
People used to act like the US having more nukes than anyone meant it could do anything forever. Actually I knew nuclear threats would not stop WW3 in middle school out of pure skill. I was born to understand carnage. Every country should have nuclear weapons. It will make me stronger.
From an objective perspective, shouldn’t capital be solving the climate crises to ensure there’s a planet to have a market on?
They're looking for immediate profit. Anyone trying to do something else is immediately out of the game.
Capitalists are also incapable of thinking more than a quarter ahead
Capitalism isn't an collective, rational consciousness between peoples (although it might be a transition towards that). It moves and develops more or less predictably according to the laws laid out in Das Kapital.
If some companies want to do degrowth to save the climate, others that refuse to do so will simply overcome them and absorb their capital.
My understanding is that they are fundamentally incapable of doing so. A capitalist firm would have to divert resources from profit to infrastructure. This would cause investor flight and the company would be set upon and cannibalized by investment firms.
They're in a zero sum standoff. No company or nation can move first or the others will eat it, and they cannot cooperate on the necessary scale. China's the only one that can make progress because they're big enough to fight off imperialism and have a mixed economy.
For the "free market" states and firms accelerating is the only direction possible.
So far the only video available is of a hit on a reported mayonnaise factory (though some sources say it could also be a drone factory).
Imagine WW3 starting because Ukraine bombed a mayonnaise factory...
Russian mayonnaise has quite the reputation. You can store them at room temperature, apparently. The destruction of its factory is not to be taken lightly.
we all knew it would ultimately come down to
I'm sorta certain Russians treat mayonnaise like Americans treat ketchup, so who knows which way the winds will blow on this
Yes, we do. Mayonnaise is absolutely everywhere
RIP the world, we destroyed their national condiment
The west will pay for it's crimes
Honestly had no idea. In that case, protect the mayo factories at all costs!
But seriously I just hope the Ukrainians don't use ATACMS simultaneously with drone attacks. That would complicate matters, to say the least.
Actually Ukrainian mayo is good too.
Maybe we are lost out on the supreme soviet mayo?
The NATO left hand doesn't know what the Azov right hand is doing, the Ukrainian nazis like any typical nazis are not rational, and they're over-stepping the mark
This really does read like some "release the Wundervaffen!" Shit. Idk how they think these strikes would even improve their position in a negotiated peace. It just seems like flailing to cause as much harm as possible or invite a retaliation where everyone dies as martyrs