Links and Stuff
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.
Yesterday's discussion post.
did russia fk up?
they did this war to prevent nato expansion into Ukraine and now sweden and finland are both thinking about joining
Russia may have fucked up in some ways, but over all they are "winning" in terms of achieving their goals while the US/NATO flails about struggling (and ultimately failing) to maintain supremacy and global dominance. Just as the West is absolutely shooting themselves in the foot with the ridiculous, backfiring sanctions, Sweden and Finland are making a grave mistake that many assume they will regret by sacrificing their neutral status. They're essentially signing up to join the hegemonic/economic decline that most of the West has already fullheartedly committed itself to. US Hegemony is a sinking ship and it's been astounding to watch so much of the "first" world hitch themselves to mast, determined to go down along with it.
Ukraine in NATO, as well as US-controlled troops and missiles at the border to Russia, is a far worse prospect for Russian security than already US-aligned Sweden and Finland in NATO. "Cuban missile crisis" levels of bad.
Ideally Russia would have preferred no NATO expansion at all but that was never an option. Keeping the Ukraine out of NATO is the least bad option from the Russian point of view.
Atop that,this war shows how toothless NATO is - in anything but nuclear escalation Russians would wipe the floor with them, as they are Doing in ukraine while using only 7-8% of their forces (and that is counted without mobilization). Thus I believe Russia is more relaxed about it than they'd be only 3 months ago.
Russia's hypersonic missiles means that, if they had enough, they could take out every NATO airbase within like half an hour, and the ones close to Ukraine's borders, within a couple minutes. i.e. Russia's strategy with Ukraine at the beginning of the war. It would be over before it started. Like, it would either be nuclear annihilation or, at BEST for NATO, a stalemate along a wide front.
They were already pseudo-NATO members, as Germany's foreign minister has pointed out
NATO expansion into Ukraine means a lot more to Russia's economy and future of relations in eastern Europe than a country that's already basically in it but doesn't technically have the Article 5 clause, now having it
deleted by creator
Finland in NATO is not guaranteed yet.