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.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • Aquilae [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    45·
    8 days ago

    Russia vetoes Sudan ceasefire resolution put forward by the UK

    Russia was the only member of the 15-member council to vote against the measure on Monday morning, in a move that British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said was “mean, nasty and cynical”.

    In an address to the Security Council after the vote, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN said that Moscow agreed “that the conflict in Sudan requires a swift resolution” and that “the only way to achieve this is for the warring parties to agree to a ceasefire”.

    But Dmitry Polyanskiy said that while the Security Council’s role is to help the warring parties achieve that, it “should not be done by imposing upon the Sudanese, through a council decision, the opinion of its individual members”.

    He accused the UK and Sierra Leone of “double standards”, pointing to Britain’s support of Israel’s ongoing humanitarian violations in its war in Gaza, and said Lammy’s criticism was an “excellent demonstration of British neo-colonialism”.

    “It is shocking that Russia has vetoed an effort to save lives – though perhaps, it shouldn’t be,” Thomas-Greenfield said on Monday after the Security Council vote. “They claim it is because of Sudanese sovereignty. But Sudan supports the resolution.”

    Isn’t this a terrible look? Though I doubt a UN resolution alone would change much.

    • What_Religion_R_They [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      7 days ago

      Russia did not support the UN Security Council a resolution prepared by the United Kingdom and Sierra Leone on Sudan because of London’s attempt to leave the opportunity for itself to interfere in the affairs of this country and attempt political and social engineering. This was announced by the first Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN Dmitry Polyansky.

      “Throughout their work on this project, they have spent a lot of effort to remove from the text the mention of the legitimate authorities of the Sudan in the most key places. Their position is absurd and unacceptable, including in the light of the fact that the Government of the Sudan represents its country in international organizations, exercises control over the main processes in the state, distributes humanitarian assistance, and the Sudanese themselves seek refuge and protection in the regions controlled by the Government. We cannot qualify such a position as anything other than leaving for themselves the opportunity to interfere in the affairs of the Sudan and further political and social engineering, as it was in the spring of 2023, when attempts to advance the decisions that are not supported by the country’s people laid the prerequisites for the tragedy that unfolded in Sudan,” the diplomat underlined.

      […]

      “The main problem with the British project is that it has a false understanding of who is responsible for protecting the Sudanese civilian population, the control and security of the borders of that State, who can decide to invite foreign forces to the Sudan. Who, in the end, should be inter-inclused by UN officials in order to solve emerging problems and plan assistance.”

      https://tass.ru/politika/22434783

      Whatever he claims goes counter to what the West claim that Russia is supporting. The demands here are for the Sudanese government to take the lead, whereas Russia is seen as supporting the RSF.

      Speaking at the Economic Conference in Port Sudan, al-Burhan criticized the resolution for not acknowledging the role of foreign actors in supplying weapons to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

      […]

      The army chief reiterated his commitment to finding a solution internally and rejecting external interference. He declared that victory against the RSF was imminent, and the war was turning to favour the SAF.

      https://sudantribune.com/article293556/