December 26th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 27th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 28th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 30th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
Going out with friends today and tomorrow! Next week and onwards things should return to normal and we can continue drudging through in the second year of this war.
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 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. 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 fairly brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. The Duran, of which he co-hosts, is where the chuddery really begins to spill out.
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 ~ Now rebranded as Battlefield Insights, they do infrequent posts on the conflict.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
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 ~ One of the really big pro-Russian (except when they’re being pessismistic, which is often) telegram channels focussing on the war. 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. 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
Any Western media outlet that is even vaguely liberal (and quite a few conservative ones too).
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.
I understand it may be hard for some but I’m not realy empathetic to people making these shitty rationalizations in order to justify their choice here.
In a way it reminds me of “treats” discussions, where people who are perhaps not as familiar with how and when we use the term “treats” come in and are like “Hey, so when you all make fun of westerners having “treats” or being addicted to them to the point where they are willing to enslave billions for them, what do you mean by that? Are you saying that we shouldn’t have nice things at all and we should all be austere to reduce suffering as much as possible?”
Usually, the nuanced position that we have on it is something like “‘Treats’ is a term used to describe objects and/or entertainment in a disparaging way because of the importance that people, particularly (but not exclusively) westerners place on them, as they are relatively more privileged than others throughout the world. A minimum level of enjoyment is necessary to have a happy and fulfilled life, and because there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, this means that as long as the current system exists then a minimum level of exploitation is inevitable (and we, as socialists, aim to ameliorate this exploitation) but consumption of objects/entertainment is often taken to excessive levels due to systematic and individual selfishness.”
I feel like a similar thing is going on when social interaction and hanging out with friends and going outside in general is discussed here, where the pro-safety people like us (for lack of a better term) are, due to mainly western propaganda, seen as totally disparaging those things and thus the positions are incorrectly assumed to be between “Spend every hour of your life inside your house or apartment, never take your mask off, do not have fun outside” and “Let it rip, cough everywhere, blood for the blood god” and people therefore come to threads like “Hmm, I have a unique and nuanced position, where you can have fun outside but make sure you’re vaccinated and wear a proper protective mask, and stay quarantined if you can while you’re infected, and don’t take unnecessary risks!” without realizing that that’s literally the position of the pro-safety side.
Except that “nuanced” position has been drifting towards the “blood for the blood god” side as time has gone by, so now it’s not really the same as the “pro-safety” side anymore. To the point where even mask-wearing (among people who were pro-mask for 2020 and 2021, not the chuds who were immediately anti-mask from day one of the pandemic) is seen as a little extreme.
