The image is of Russians in Rostov climbing up a Wagner tank.
New thread’s preamble:
What a mess. The amount of information going around is hard to determine, but we know with relative certainty:
- Wagner forces are in Rostov near the Defence Ministry building and are fortifying it; the Russian army and Chechens are en route
- A/several Wagner column is moving from Rostov to Moscow, and along the way Russia is setting up barriers and blocking roads, but it seems like Wagner is spreading out through western Russia wherever they can go.
- Prigozhin has no support from any internal force that we currently know of.
update: Lukashenko has saved Putin’s ass. At least, that’s the current narrative I’m going with - further analysis will probably change perceptions of the situation.
Old thread’s preamble:
Mali’s military government - which overthrew the old military government last year - has called on the UN to withdraw its peacekeeping forces in the MINUSMA program (the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali), which is the third largest peacekeeping force in the world. It was established in 2012 in the wake of the Tuareg Rebellion, in which the northern half the country, calling itself Azawad, began a fight for independence from the southern side.
The “official” fighting was over relatively quickly - the Malian military, with the help of France, retook most of the country in a year or two. But insurgencies continue to plague the region, with local militias and Islamic State jihadists taking advantage of the chaos. The idea behind the UN mission is to stabilize the situation and patrol the area - this has made it the second deadliest mission so far.
After a decade of not much progress being made, first the French pulled out in August 2022 after anti-French protests inside the country, and now the MINUSMA force is being asked to pull out after similar protests. The Russian UN ambassador has said:
“The real issue is not the number of peacekeepers but the functions, and one of the key tasks for the government of Mali is fighting terrorism, which is not provided for in the mandate of the blue helmets,”
Additionally, MINUSMA released a report last year stating that the Malian government (with the help of “foreign military elements” of which the implication is the Wagner Group) has accelerated civilian killings and human rights abuses, which hasn’t made the mission more likeable to the government, I would imagine.
Update on the situation in Mali:
The rebel coalition in the north, the CSP-PSD (Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development - man, this sounds like it was named in a Washington DC office), has said that if the UN mission is pulled out as the military government is demanding, then this would be a “fatal blow” to the peace accord and threaten regional stability. The coalition previously withdrew from the negotiating table back in December as they grew impatient with the two successive military governments, and it’s possible that more active fighting will continue in Mali soon. MINUSMA’s mandate runs out on June 30th and if it isn’t renewed by then, we may see an orderly withdrawal of UN forces taking about a year, leaving Mali by itself (and, I suppose, the Wagner Group).
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we’ve collected.
This week’s first update is here in the comments.
This week’s second update is [here[(https://hexbear.net/comment/3553612) in the comments.
This week’s third update is here in the comments.
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 decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
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 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.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the warzone.
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 ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist (but still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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’s army.
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
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.
Last week’s discussion post.
A Party Glorifying Godse - People’s Democracy
https://hexbear.net/post/273560
THE true meaning of ‘Amrit Kaal’ is unfolding with the relentless attacks on the Muslim minorities accompanied by hate speech and glorification of Gandhiji’s killer, Godse.
In Maharashtra, the Shinde-BJP government has gone on a spree of renaming cities which have Muslim names. Aurangabad has become Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Osmanabad is now Dharashiv, Ahmednagar district has been declared to be Ahilyabai Holkar Nagar. These changes were accompanied by majoritarian triumphalism and the demonising of Muslim rulers and historical figures. Prior to this, 50 Hindu Jan Aakrosh Morcha rallies were held over four months all over Maharashtra, which became open displays of Muslim-baiting and Hindu bigotry.
There has been communal violence in Shevgaon village in Ahmednagar district followed by communal clashes in Kolhapur. Devendra Fadnavis, the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, has called out ‘Aurangzeb ki aulad’ as responsible for this situation. That a senior BJP leader who holds the home portfolio can make such a statement shows the brazen adoption of hate politics by those holding official positions.
In BJP-ruled states, putting Muslims in their place and disempowering them economically seems to be a deliberate policy. In Uttarakhand, where Muslims are a tiny proportion of the population, in Purola, Uttarkashi, Muslim shopkeepers have been asked to vacate their shops. Muslim shops have been marked with a black cross and an ultimatum was given to them to vacate by June 15. This is consequent to an abduction incident of a minor girl in which, of the two persons involved, one was a Muslim youth. Already some of the shopkeepers have shut down their shops in the market and gone away. Similar demands asking Muslim traders to leave bazars have been raised in other places too.
Motivating such Muslim baiting is the politics of hate and bigotry of the BJP-RSS combine. Recently, the union rural development minister, Giriraj Singh, called Nathuram Godse a ‘sapoot’ of India. He said, “If he was a killer of Gandhi, he was also a sapoot (worthy son) of Bharat Mata”. The glorification of Godse has become a punctual theme for the BJP leadership. Just a few days before Giriraj Singh’s comment, the former chief minister of Uttarakhand, Trivendra Singh Rawat, said that “Gandhiji was killed, this is a different issue. Godse too was a patriot”. Before that, in 2019, Pragya Singh Thakur, BJP MP from Bhopal and accused in a terrorist case, had called Godse a patriot; Nalin Kumar Kateel, the BJP MP from Karnataka, had justified Godse by saying that he killed only one, while Rajiv Gandhi had killed 17,000 people. So, at all levels of the BJP, Godse-loving is the norm. The veneration of Savarkar, another Gandhi hater, is an accompanying chorus.
A party glorifying Godse and setting out to establish a Hindutva Rashtra is what the New India is all about.
(June 14, 2023)
