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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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.
ICC woke up
russian guidance for icbm so shit they missed kiev by 1000 kms.
Weird news all around
*big brainy take, maybe iran gave them one of their thingies with shorter range
Lol. But last night the Kh-101 cruise missiles did a weird flight path, they flew to Kyiv, did a u turn there, and hit their targets in the East. Combined with the ICBM/IRBM launch against Dnipro with 6 Multiple Re-entry Vehicles per strike, it seems that a clear message is being sent.
Message to whom though? Z-man clearly doesn't give a shit about anybody, amerikkkans don't give a shit about ukrainians. Obvious impasse resolution is either remove z-man, make ukrainians remove z-man (via electricity, cause can't just use normal store bought assassins, as that's uncivil), or escalate with one of the doggies (brits) embassies, who can't realistically interfere
Threatening nuclear before like doing decapitation attempts is wildly daft, even by russian standards
I'd say it's a message to NATO. Even in it's conventional form here, Russia demonstrated a weapon with accurate MRV and/or cluster warheads capable of hitting NATO assets, like airfields, without any chance of interception.
But message of what? you send ukraine more aid, we will bomb ukraine more? They don't give a shit
We will bomb you
If I were a policymaker in the Russian government, I'd float the idea of sending four more of these ballistic missiles. Land one precisely 50Km north, south, east, and west of the US embassy.
Literally just flexing on Ukrainian air defense
Why would the Russian government want to remove the current Ukrainian leadership? They're completely predictable. That's a nice trait to have in an adversary.
Like the Kursk incursion?
With
removed, Ukrainian oligarchs and army brass would have to fight in the open for the steering wheel.
Zelenskyyy was perfect for propaganda purposes, truly a gift that the Ukrainian Jon Stewart was the president at the start of the war and not a ghoulish oligarch like Poroshenko
Though I don't think Russians need to do anything else than what they've been doing to win this war and force the West to the table
There's a theory that Kursk was a trap used to attrite the UAF.
only people removing zman will be nato
if anything the russians should be protecting zman since he's probably the last shred of ukrainian sovereignty, however diluted, that stands between nato and the complete sockpuppeting of what is left of the ukrainian state
like if i were the russians i would definitely take my chances with zman over some generic nato eunuch
He is already a natoid, and absence of legal leadership will heavily undercut mobilization efforts (which are under legal terms), enough to make patronage networks dissipate/warlordize, which again will help russians even militarily, sans peace talks.
Its not popular resistance movement, its state apparatus following its nato goals
missed washington by 8000 kms*
Ivan you forgot load nuclear warhead
low effort joke
ammonuclear warheads""in the wing of the plane
"
you see ivan, if you remove warhead, you leave room for speakers to blast hardbass