With it being overwhelmingly likely that Ukraine will receive Germany's Leopard tanks (whether from Germany itself or Poland), German tanks once again roll into battle against Russian forces after nearly a century.
Can the Leopard succeed against the Russian army where it failed in Syria? We'll find out soon enough.
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.
January 23rd's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 25th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 27th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 28th's update is here on the site and 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 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. 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 fairly brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. The Duran, of which he co-hosts, is where the chuddery really begins to spill out.
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 ~ Now rebranded as Battlefield Insights, they do infrequent posts on the conflict.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
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 ~ One of the really big pro-Russian (except when they're being pessismistic, which is often) telegram channels focussing on the war. 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. 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
Any Western media outlet that is even vaguely liberal (and quite a few conservative ones too).
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.
I don't know if this is the right thread, but posting must commence. I work as a teacher in Sweden and I've been assigned a group of refugee children to work with. Four students are from Ukraine, and it has been a very interesting experience to observe them and their interactions with the war. They all regularly consume war-related content through TikTok, and I've been talking a lot with them about their feelings in some kind of makeshift Russian/English/Swedish mashup language. Three of the students speak Russian as their mother tongue, but all three are very flexible in switching to Ukrainian, and the fourth student only grew up with Ukrainian. The three "Russian" students are from Dnipro, Zaporozhye and Cherkasy and they only interact with each other and barely interact with the guy from Ternopil. Funnily enough, the pure Ukrainian guy has become friends with Uzbek and Chechen guys and they speak broken Russian with each other despite being from two opposite sides of the former USSR.
The most interesting part for me is the fact that the three students that grew up with Russian language and culture are way more hostile towards Russia as an entity than the Ukrainian guy. In the beginning when they were trying to gauge my "russophobia", they only used Ukrainian pronunciations and were very insistent that they wanted Ukrainian default language on the translation app on their school Chromebooks, but now they've dropped the act and openly use Russian terms for cities and so. They're still very "anti-Russia" in their own way, and call Putin all kinds of nice Russian insults. The Ukrainian guy on the other hand seems pretty chill about the whole thing, he even shows me anti-Zelensky memes on TikTok and made fun of Klitschko after he claimed that Ukrainian AD stopped all missiles, "khwhy no electicity if 50 rocket no boom?".
The main takeaway for me is that the conflict is way deeper than just "oh russians live in this part, so invasion good" or the opposite NATOoid "le big bad putler" narrative. Another big conclusion is that the fall of the USSR is truly the biggest tragedy in modern history, it's a crime against humanity that some fake ass administrative borders leads to brutal dumb wars when all these people lived in peace and harmony under the USSR. Asian-looking Uzbeks, ginger Chechens and a blond Ukrainian guy whose ancestors were probably Polish all shared a common destiny and even today watch Hasbulla clips together and share the same Telegram memes, despite growing up with three different languages and cultures.
Translated excerpts from a Czech news article
“Any country that would supply Leopard 2s to Ukraine is being offered U.S. tanks from its own inventory & a long-term industrial partnership as a substitute according to German industrial circles.
"All countries sending Leos to Ukraine will be lost to the German tank industry”
Countries sending Ukraine their Leopards will be giving up an effective and made in the EU tanks which they are trained on. In exchange they will receive mothballed Abrams tanks for "free" but be reliant on the U.S for the very massively more expensive servicing, parts, upgrades, and future purchases which the tank requires.
There's a reason why before last year there was not a single European country operating the Abrams, it's obscenely maintenance intensive, makes little sense for their environment, and ensures their dependency on the United States Military Industrial Complex. But Dark Brandon has done what would have been impossible under Trump and now has European Liberals begging to increase their dependency on the United States, all the while calling any opposing voices a "Putin puppet."
Death to Europe and all that, but it's maddening seeing how fucking naive and geopolitcally stupid European leadership has been since February.
It's like a Marvel movie where the good guys have to be draindead imbeciles for the bad guys plan to work :soypoint-1:
But Dark Brandon has done what would have been impossible under Trump and now has European Liberals begging to increase their dependency on the United States, all the while calling any opposing voices a “Putin puppet.”
Death to Europe and all that, but it’s maddening seeing how fucking naive and geopolitcally stupid European leadership has been since February.
The European elite has been subsumed by US financial capital. They're increasingly disconnected from the popular base (which, incidentally, is why we're seeing a rash of socialist and reactionary movements popping off all across Europe) and more bound up in their annual Davos summits than any getting-yelled-at constituency session at home.
European Leadership might as well be a different species than the European proletariat. Much like their American peers, they've become entirely disassociated from one another.
This is the reason why China banning American social media was a great decision. Europe is just facing natural consequences.
It's kinda scary seeing a continent becoming puppets of America just because of propaganda.
I would not necessarily call them stupid in their actions. They are doing exactly as their masters tell them. They are fucking themselves for the sake of their US handlers. Thats all this has ever been. As the US empire begins to crumble they will cannibalize their vassals. So while they may be stupid in allowing themselves to be puppeteered in such a way, in the end the US holds the leash and the dogs must obey.
The sons of fail sons so inbred on their own myths that they can't even manage a sense of self-preservation.
The people going to NATO summits are going to be fine. They're not going to fear for their livelihoods or freeze or starve or die in a trench for no good reason. At worst they will loose an election to somebody with identical politics and keep their comfy lifestyles as opposition politicians. Their self-preservation is as secure as they could ever want, it is just that they are not concerned with preserving the rest of us.
Germany getting reamed so hard they'll be playing the Stars and Stripes fart orchestra soon.
The New York Crimes is now saying that Brazil punishing the coup plotters might be the death of the rule of law.
Thats the post.
Is this the article you're referring to, or are they doing a full-court press?
https://archive.is/eD4Yk "Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, was crucial to Brazil’s transfer of power. But his aggressive tactics are prompting debate: Can one go too far to fight the far right?"
Can one go too far to fight the far right?
lmfao. not a single doubt in my mind that the NYT would have been completely behind the Freikorps
They were literally pro-slavery back in the day and wrote at least one glowing (in every sense of the word) portrayal of Hitler before WWII
Yes. NYT is now taking their talking points from Glenn Greenwald. The idea that Alexandre de Moraes is some sort of tyrant judge is a far right talking point that ignores how often 'Moraes did a thing' means him acting with the majority of the supreme court, with the backing of other courts, or by request from other government institutions like the attorney general.
"Using a broad interpretation of the court’s powers, he has pushed to investigate and prosecute, as well as to silence on social media, anyone he deems a menace to Brazil’s institutions."
A "broad interpretation" agreed upon by everyone except the fascists, apparently.
I'm not gonna sit here and tell our American posters to hashtag VOTE but every week new revelations show that Jan8th wasn't a circus. The commander of the armed forces threatened police and the government with mutiny (which is why lula purged him). What this means is that if Bolsonaro had even a timid greenlight from a Trump Administration I'd be living under either Bolsonaro or a junta right now.
What's infuriating however is that it truly doesn't matter what we do. It doesn't matter how good we are for american capitalism. Or that we work with the US. Or that we try to maximize our peripheric economy. It doesn't matter how succdem we get, stunts like these from NYT show that even the Biden Imperium is barely interested in brazilian democracy.
The existential dread of when going online in 2 years and campaigning for the inevitable Kamala Candidacy is the only thing I can do to avert fascism in my country :doomjak:
Wasn't it Greenwald who broke the story of the Brazilian Judges secretly coordinating with the prosecution to jail Lula? Is he now pearl clutching about Lula purging corruption Glen highlighted?
Glen's right wing turn is a storied event, but apparently he was always a lolbertarian and has been a pro Bolsonaro talking head for a long time now.
gotta ask why someone wouldn't be in favor of silencing dissenting voices if those voices are nazis
Fuck Discord. Every fucking g*mer community and two thirds of open source projects just abandoned everything and jumped feet first into another slick looking honeypot platform that steals data, sidesteps web standards and constantly begs for money.
The US is a pirate nation selling Venezuelan oil and making sure the money never reaches the Venezuelans, truly incredible
Erdogan says Turkey may block Sweden's Nato membership bid
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suggested that Ankara may agree to Finland joining Nato, but not Sweden.
He criticised Sweden's refusal to extradite dozens of people allegedly tied to Kurdish militant groups and other critics of his government.
"If you absolutely want to join Nato, you will return these terrorists to us," said Mr Erdogan.
His comments come days after Turkey suspended talks to accept the two Nordic nations as members.
it would be really funny if he did block sweden and finland from joining again
Has anyone else experienced a noticeable differences when talking to normal people IRL about Ukraine versus on :reddit-logo: ? IRL, my "normie" friends and family are much more open to the idea that Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east and Crimean have legitimate grievances against the Ukrainian government, and that Ukrainian government made shit worse instead of better in the run-up to both wars.
After weeks of resistance, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that, along with allies, the country would provide 88 of the battle tanks to Ukraine, effectively giving Kyiv more firepower to launch new offensives. The Biden administration was also expected to announce a deal to send 30 M1 Abrams tanks to the country.
Germany is sending the Hitler number of tanks?
https://www.yahoo.com/now/putin-lackeys-lose-minds-over-143837232.html
Feels good to have the entire western world cheering on and supporting literal Nazis.......again. Does the West think that Russians have no national memory? We're inching awfully close to very destructive timeline. Does Russia decide to clear the the board, since the West will never allow them to peacefully exist?
We are the baddies. Germany may have lost WWII. But fascism was victorious. We're always going to fuck with Russia and anyone else who doesn't let western finance in to pillage. Where does this conflict go?
Inadvisably checked some news sites and its so fucking jokerfying seeing Perus coup government get treated like a smol bean, described as "pleading" for people to stop protesting them(while they massacre indigenous protestors), then one step down you've got the Syrian "regime".
Regime is both a dogshit word but also useful in that if someone describes a government as a regime you can safely stop listening to them and instead transition to practicing your psychic brainblast on them.
Welp, this war will drag on for years. The Germans will announce very soon that they're sending tanks, probably after getting shouted at by the American psychos. Poland and a few other European doormats are also sending tanks. Abrams are also probably getting sent soon by the Brandon admin, at least 30-50 ones according to the news on the bird website today. At what point does this become an official war between NATO and Russia? NATO has now done every single possible hostile act against Russia except direct bombing of Russian positions.
Erdogan is now saying that he won't back Sweden's NATO bid after the shit they pulled in Stockholm
Alhamdulillah
Gotta wonder if this ends with Sweden getting snuck in under a technicality or - cooler still - Turkey getting kicked out of NATO.
Turkey is far more valuable to NATO than Sweden in countering Russia. I don't think there's a technicality to this, but I think eventually Turkey will get some concession enough to let Sweden in.
Turkey is far more valuable to NATO than Sweden in countering Russia.
No denying that. But it isn't entirely clear whether Turkey is allied against Russia so much as allied in their domestic interest.
I suspect the Turks are more than happy to feast on all that cheap gas Germany has turned down, for instance. Nobody's gotten around to bombing the TurkStream yet.
I think eventually Turkey will get some concession enough to let Sweden in.
I imagine it'll be something of a bidding war and Russia's got nothing but money to spend ATM.
Lol the west is so going to make sure erdogan isn’t reelected
Sweden won't extradite PKK refugees back to Turkey, so Turkey is blocking Swedish accession to NATO
What does that have to do with a kurdish genocide? Religious conservative kurds are one of the key supporting demographics of the AKP, hatred for the PKK cuts through all demographics in Turkey.
Sweden is basically saying 'hey Erdogan, here's a cheap way to pander to millions of voters', which is what he wanted in the first place. Otherwise he wouldn't have made this into a public dispute.
We're not extraditing Swedish citizens, but we are denying asylum to an increasing amount of Kurdish refugees for reason of "security concerns" on behalf of Turkey.
Looking forward to seeing those Abrams and Leopards (painted with balkenkreuzes and flying SS flags) blown to pieces and stuck in mud everywhere in Ukraine. :antelope-popcorn:
