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.
Exit polls for Romanian elections
Ciolacu-25%
Lasconi-18%
Georgescu-16%
Simion-15%
Ciuca-14%
Geoana-5%
Not counting diaspora vote
Very surprising,Trump 2016 style surge for Georgescu,the russophile reactionary,in rest the results are pretty expected
We'll have to see what comes out after the votes are counted
There is a distinct possibility of a PSD-USR runoff in the second round,and if that's the case,I'm putting my money on Ciolacu
From Politico:
Another one of the board for right wingers taking up the anti-war mantle.
Exactly
However no one that I knew could tell you about this guy prior to today, he apparently had a herculean botting and astroturfing campaign on social media starting just two weeks ago and now he was skyrocketed into first place (!), beyond even Ciolacu
So,I interpreted this as people not wanting war,coupled with the most glaring foreign interference aided by local elements known to man
Eastern Europe really loves its red brown alliances for some reason.
I'm not sure there's even a red in romania to be allied to, this is just the brown having a better position on the war than the center for, probably, purely nationalist reasons.
We'll see how committed the PSD is to not collaborating with this guy, the second round is in two weeks,and I honestly can't say who's gonna win
Anyway,what I'm really curious for is what party will champion this guy's cause and get a surge, because he's nominally independent,but he has to have a counterpart dominating in parliament,the guys who managed all this can't simply just have him as president,this has to be some sort of realignment attempt
I was dooming about Romanian politics being stagnant since the 90's,but this?This is the mother of all surprises for me, because I can't see why the Americans want this guy,so it has to be some other actor
If you want my pet theory,it is in another comment in this reply chain
https://prezenta.roaep.ro/prezidentiale24112024/pv/romania/results/
Georgescu has since pulled ahead to first place with 96% counted, so I guess the runoff will be him vs Ciolacu. Any thoughts on that match-up?
My thoughts is that this mf was put in by someone, can't say exactly who, because me and most people I know didn't fucking know who this mf was until now
Apparently he had the mother of all botting and astroturfing campaigns on TikTok and Facebook starting just two weeks ago
The mf is an avowed antisemite, legionary scum,but from what I hear very Pro-Russia,which is the mother of all surprises for me
So, either the CIA is pulling all it's assets from Romania in some sort of mirror of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact or the FSB became the main characters for this period and got goddamn superpowers because this is absolutely incredible
People were apparently bombarded with him on social media and I think voted with him so much because they don't wanna get dragged into a NATO-Russia war,which is very understandable,but also because of the fact that the other far right pro Russian candidate, Diana Sosoaca of the SOS Party was not allowed to run by the Constitutional Court and that from further analysis,it seems AUR was more moderate in terms of its chuddery that I thought
Either way,a masterfully engineered election,I have to give it to whoever wanted this guy, along with the elements in the Romanian secret services who made this all possible
I was joking before with my friends that we'll see the second round be the return of Ceausism,"left" vs far right,as he was both,and it appears I was right, though I was blindsided by the right being not AUR,but the Russophile
It's anyone's guess who's gonna win then,but all I have to say for the moment is that Romanian politics have just become a hell of a lot more interesting