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.
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 ~ ASB Military News, banned from Twitter.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster - crowd-funded U.S journalist, mostly pro-Russian, works on the ground near warzones to report news and talk to locals.
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 ~ 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.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
With the entire western media sphere being overwhelming pro-Ukraine already, you shouldn't really need more, but:
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.
Yesterday's discussion post.
Russia is winning as for the last couple months they've been focussing on an artillery war, which Russia is really good at, and destroying Ukrainian equipment and killing and wounding tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops. There has been considerable movement on the Donbass front in that time, but if you've glanced at the map every now and then, it would seem like there's been little movement. This is because Donbass has been reinforced by trench networks and strongpoints over the last 8 years of fighting, with defense in depth, and Ukraine is using the WW2 Nazi strategy of holding indefensible positions at great cost to their own troops for no particular gain other than hollow media "victories" as they're "stalemating" Russia. The West has been sending weaponry, yes, but it's drying up aside from the US's stockpile (and even that is looking a little dicey) because Europe just doesn't have the industrial capacity nor willingness to send in enough equipment. Just yesterday, one of Zelensky's advisers said they needed an incredible amount of equipment - 1000 howitzers, 500 tanks I think, the list goes on. Germany is just now finishing up the training and supply of seven howitzers. Ukraine is also running out of ammo, while Russia, despite many predictions that their supplies and industry would collapse, has maintained its rate of fire and is turning their army, as I said before, into paste. Ukraine has achieved some limited advances up near Kharkiv, but it's too little too late. They're trying to attack Kherson on a wide front right now, but it doesn't seem to be going super well for them - they're mainly trying to draw Russian forces away from Donbass, like they're in a chokehold and they're trying to punch Russia to try and weaken their grip, but it's getting ever meeker as they run out of oxygen.
Everybody knows it's a proxy war, it's just how much the officials wanna officially admit it. For example, a month or so ago, the NYT(?) ran an article about how American intelligence is being used to kill Russian generals and such, and American officials told the journalists to shut the fuck up.
Russia has consolidated its hold on Kherson and most of Zaporozhye oblast (changing their education systems, switching from Ukraine's currency to the ruble, wiping away bank debts of the citizens, offering Russian passports and citizenship), in the south of Ukraine, and it looks like they're just gonna get annexed. Russia holds, or will hold once the DPR and LPR are fully captured/liberated/whatever, a full quarter of Ukraine's territory, and a significant proportion of its arable and industrial base. Russia may end up going for Odessa and Mykolaiv oblasts once Donbass is liberated. They could even go for the whole of Ukraine, though I'm not sure how much I really believe that.
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I think the efforts of the MSM were initially like a nuclear bomb of propaganda for the first week or two, with the Snake Island thing and the Ghost of Kyiv, and then it settled down into a Great Wall, where no opinion even vaguely critical of Ukraine could penetrate. This has only really broken a bit in the last week or so, with a slate of articles suggesting that Ukraine might not actually win this. But today, there's a return to the old narrative. I ultimately think that they'll push the pro-Ukraine narrative right up until the last Ukrainian soldier dies defending the last Ukrainian city, if it comes to that. They report Russian advances as losses, but those losses are getting suspiciously closer and closer to Ukrainian cities...
There's been a whole saga over the last few months about what exactly Zelensky and his party are going for. Zelensky himself isn't a very helpful source, as he jumps between "We will need to negotiate with Russia to end this war" and "We will retake Donbass and Crimea no matter what!" on consecutive days. I think there's a good case that he and his party are being controlled by the West - there was an example about how the timing of Ukraine withdrawing from negotiations was at the exact same time that Boris Johnson went to go visit and talked to Zelensky. Since Istanbul in March(?), there hasn't been any serious attempt at restarting negotiations. The West has gradually shifted from "Ukraine will obviously win this war" to "Okay, Ukraine might not win, and besides what even is victory? But we need to continue giving them weapons so that they can have the best negotiating position possible." The obvious problem with that is that Ukraine continues to lose territory every day, and they aren't really getting any stronger compared to Russia, so if that remains the official policy, the war will never end unless Ukraine is fully annexed, or at least the government is captured and a puppet government is put in its place.
Russia likely wants Novorossiya, which is a region that broadly constitutes the east and south of Ukraine. Odessa, Myklolaiv, Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkiv. Maybe Dnipro, maybe not. You can freely speculate whether Russia will actually get all that before Ukraine capitulates, or whether Ukraine will never capitulate and Russia will just continue advancing towards the west and north. Medvedev just said “Who said Ukraine will exist on the world map in two years?” in response to the US proposing a Lend-Lease program that will last until 2024. Is that just a threat to scare them into surrendering? Is that a promise? I don't know.
There's most definitely a large number of people in the Russian govt that want to go all the way to kiev. They start saying things than the next day kremlin walks it back.
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I thought Russia was motivated in no small part by not wanting to share borders with NATO. If they annexed all of Ukraine, that would kinda go out the window, no?
Russia already shares borders with NATO. They don't want NATO to have open terrain to drive through to Moscow from Kiev, nor for NATO to control a country that is (or at least was) an important ally to Russia.
Ukraine would resume it's historical role as Russia's borderlands, a buffer between Russia and Europe.
Latvia and Estonia exist.