October 10th’s update is here! TLDR? Here’s the summary.
October 11th’s update is here! TLDR? Here’s the summary.
October 12th’s update is here!. TLDR? Here’s the summary!
No updates on Thursdays.
October 15th’s update is here! TLDR? Here’s the summary.
Just an update on my situation: I’ll almost certainly be moving within the next week or two. The last update for a little while will be next Wednesday, the 19th. I’m going to then take a break to set things up, get to know my surroundings and such. I hope to be ready to start doing this again on the 28th, but I will post that week’s megathread on the 24th.
After that, I will hopefully be able to keep doing this more consistently and things will get less busy than they have in recent weeks. I strongly appreciate all the compliments I get and I’m glad to be part of such a great community! :Care-Comrade:
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists, for the “buh Zeleski is a jew?!?!” people.
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, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
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.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
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 ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ ASB Military News, banned from Twitter.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster - crowd-funded U.S journalist, mostly pro-Russian, works on the ground near warzones to report news and talk to locals.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it’s a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
With the entire western media sphere being overwhelming pro-Ukraine already, you shouldn’t really need more, but:
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.
Is Russia even pretending that denazification is the true goal of the SMO anymore? Putin spent much of his speech last week focusing on how the operation is an existential struggle against the d*generacy of the West—here are his literal words:
Do we want to have, here, in our country, in Russia, parent number one, number two, number three instead of mom and dad? Have they gone mad out there? Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed on children in our schools from the primary grades? To be drummed into them that there are various supposed genders besides women and men, and to be offered a sex change operation? Do we want all this for our country and our children?”
Putin seems to have strayed quite far from originally justifying the invasion by seeking denazification of Ukraine! I know many users here are openly rooting for Russia to crush Ukraine—and I do believe they will ultimately achieve most if not all of their military objectives—but this isn’t such a black and white conflict. Anecdotally many of the Russians I know in my own life hate the “backwards” socially liberal norms they see as representative of NATO and the West.
What if many Ukrainians just don’t want to be part of Russia and are pissed off about their country being invaded? I’m pretty sure that applies to a significant portion of the men fighting for Ukraine in the invasion at the moment. Zelenskyy did legitimately win an election, he was quite popular at the time of the election although his popularity had waned up to the invasion. From what I hear many people there were disappointed in his corruption, which is much of the reason why they voted out Poroshenko in 2019.
Not everything is a Western plot even if I’d personally argue that former Soviet states like Belarus were not given a fair shot by the West after the dissolution of Soviet Union. But my family is from there and much of the support for Tsikhanouskaya is genuine—nearly all of the young people there hate Lukashenko, he is a mad man. She is clearly being fed CIA talking points but many of the young people over there want better economic opportunities, they no longer want to be ruled by Putin’s bitch.
The neoliberal Western propaganda machine is brutal and they are clearly obfuscating how much Russia is in control of the SMO, but to me Russia isn’t much better than the West and for many people living in Ukraine I do believe the West may offer better opportunities if the alternative is being folded into Russia against their will. Since Putin has pivoted to speaking out against “Western values” so much recently it’s been very demoralizing for those of us hoping for an alternative option to the West focused on the collective rather than the individual. But he has made it crystal clear that is not what this war is primarily about.
