Image is of the drying Canelon Grande Reservoir in Uruguay as the country battles three consecutive years of drought, its worst in nearly a century.
Quoting every country and region that is currently suffering under unprecedented climatic conditions and posting every graph showing extremely concerning things happening would make this preamble way too long, so I’m gonna keep it short and merely say that, holy shit, the consequences of fossil fuel executives’ actions are looking real fucking bad.
Hundreds of millions of people, if not billions, are currently enduring higher than average temperatures sometimes reaching up 48 degrees Celsius or 120 degrees Fahrenheit or even beyond. Drought is putting pressure on water supplies basically everywhere around the world. And El Nino is activating, which will only do further damage.
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 and third update have done the Dragonball Z fusion dance and created this long-ass thing that took me… a while to get done.
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.
Ukrainian commanders … had reverted to old habits — decades of Soviet-style training in artillery barrages — rather than sticking with the Western tactics
I love how the implication here is that they’re sticking with Soviet tactics because of “habit”, as if the Slavic brainpan in just too dumb to grasp the 5D chess of NATO, rather than, you know, Soviet tactics being superior.
The bit about “not using combined arms tactics” also adds to this - there was similar cope about the Turkish military losing a bunch of Leopards in Syria, “well they just weren’t using the right tactics!”. Every time Westerners are met with some evidence that their shit just isn’t as good as they think it is, their retort is that it just wasn’t used correctly.
Well, have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, your stuff being used “wrong” over and over again might indicate something about the “right” way? That maybe, fancy combined arms operations are actually really fucking difficult, and assuming that your military is just going to manage to successfully pull them off because your training is totally so much better is, in fact, delusional? That maybe the Soviet style of fighting is informed by their actual experience of fighting in some of the largest and bloodiest mechanized actions ever, and thus knowing the difficulty in executing such plans, in coordinating hundreds of thousands of troops, in managing all the infantry and tanks and air assets and ammunition and the huge amounts of fuel needed to keep all that equipment going?
Nah, it must just be that all those other militaries are too dumb to execute our genius plans! Unlike us, who’ve never made any massive military blunders. It’s like… did you learn nothing from this little obscure event called World War fucking Two? Are the Russians the only ones who even remember that happening? There’s memory-holing, and then there’s this shit.
there was similar cope about the Turkish military losing a bunch of Leopards in Syria, “well they just weren’t using the right tactics!”
I mean, in that case they really weren’t. From what I understand, a lot of those early losses really were down to unsupported armor. Which was inexcusable given the urban environment. Russia and Ukraine are using carriers and armor across steppe fields and forest lines, to move at all is to recognize that there will be losses.
The main complaint from the US and other Western countries is that Ukraine is not using “combined arms” tactics, which integrate infantry, armored vehicles, and artillery. Instead, Ukraine is relying on artillery and sending small teams of engineers to clear minefields, which Ukrainian officials say they are doing to prevent unnecessary losses.
My brother in christ, the West isn’t providing them the equipment nor training for combined arms tactics. You’re asking Ukraine to run a marathon with a broken leg. The NATO battalions were completely fucking mauled and died horrifically in minefields while being shot at by Russian helicopters who only temporarily stopped, not because they were shot down or pressured in any way, but to refuel and re-arm to begin round #14 of that night’s slaughter. The Soviet-style ones are the ones surviving long enough to put any pressure on the Russians.
This actually is great news.
If the West is blaming Ukraine, it signals they want this conflict to end. Obviously there will be a struggle behind closed doors, but it’s an encouraging sign this won’t escalate much further.
I really hope you’re right, way too many lives have been lost. However, one could fear that this is not as much a face-saving way of distancing themselves from the Kiev regime as it is a symptom of western delusions of invincibility that will lead them to micromanage Ukraine even more detailed (those Soviet Slavs have no idea what they’re doing, let’s put real aryans in command), leading to more destruction and more death.
Ukrainian troops received combined arms training in NATO countries ahead of the counteroffensive, and the Biden administration wants them to use it.
why does nato presume they can teach ukrainians how to fight? nato has basically no combat experience outside of counter-insurgency operations. It’s ukrainians that should be teaching nato, not the other way around
These dinguses just want fucking Kursk 2: Slobo Ukrobo boogaloo. “Just send more armor against them, simply rush more tanks and men into the enemy fortifications while under heavy fire. We gave you whatever we had lying around cause it was too shitty to use for ourselves, now go kill the Ruskies! :think-mark:”
It’s literally fucking gamerbrain! “Hm well, I’ve played my fair share of military strategy games so I personally don’t understand why Ukraine didn’t put 20 turns of production into tanks, then another 20 into ranged units, and then another 20 into siege, and finally 20 into infantry over the winter and spring, and then click them towards the battlefield using their railroads which allow them to move at 4x the rate as on a normal road, and then use the 25% extra promotion experience card to quickly boost the army.”
Ukraine didn’t win because they failed to research +3 infantry attack and defense upgrades.
This makes a lot of sense.
If you check Suriyakmaps, you’ll notice that Ukraine has been making a lot of small gains over the past few days, bit by bit, much like you used to see from Russia.
My thought is that they are now employing the same strategy as Russia, using the supplies they got from the West.
In other words, the West is mad that Ukraine isn’t using the strategy that would lead to its swift collapse and total defeat.
In other words, the West is mad that Ukraine isn’t using the strategy that would lead to its swift collapse and total defeat.
My thought is that the West would much prefer a clarifying outcome than to be committed for an indefinite amount of time to a losing proposition (and one which has a chance to really escalate). So I would figure that a Big O, which has at least a small chance of actually changing the trajectory of the conflict, is preferred, and is viewed as having little downside (or maybe even all upside).
The big issue is that they are still at a massive artillery disadvantage. They may be able to make small pushes along the mine fields (which is the smart play and much better for them), but it will be interesting to see what happens when they actually reach the first, second, and third lines of defense. Will things slow down even more, or will Russia just keep abandoning areas of their line and mining the retreat?
