Image is of Chinese FM Qin Gang and German FM Annalena Baerbock, in Berlin.
Conor Gallagher over at Naked Capitalism details the latest in EU idiocy - foreign ministers backed a more hardline position on China and are considering putting sanctions on Chinese companies that they accuse of supporting Russia. The ideological contagion of "you are either with us or against us" has, without a shadow of a doubt, taken root in the brains of European politicians despite whatever words fall out of Macron's mouth.
The obvious problem here is that China is the EU's biggest trading partner for goods, their second largest import market, and their third largest export market. China's manufacturing is equal to that of the US and Europe combined, outputting most pharmaceutical ingredients, processing most rare earths, manufacturing most solar power wafers, and leads the world in the clean energy market in general - important, as the EU has given up cheap energy from Russia. It is not impossible for the West to develop their own domestic alternatives, but it will take several years to do so, and the sanctions war may escalate independent of that timetable.
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 update is 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 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.
Analysis by Oberst Reisner of the Austrian Bundesheer
(Talk in German)
Context
This is about one month old. He's an Austrian military analysts and historian working for the Bundesheer. He has been to Russia. Cites the same public sources as anybody else. But he has institutional backing of course, and NATO contacts.
He's sympathetic to the Ukrainian side, but Austria is formally neutral and he's trying to be objective it seems. Likes to point out Ukrainian success stories but otherwise seems pretty factual and competent (as far as I can judge this).
Talking about information warfare, he acknowledges that the picture painted in the western media is wrong or misleading and is actively being manipulated by psyops.
Takeaways
A lot of analysis corroborates the stuff posted by the usual sources here, but I'll put some more spicy opinions at end. I cherry-picked these points. He talks quite positively about some Ukrainian tactics and Western weapons. I left out some of those examples because they seem rather minor to me.
Russia has the strategic (i.e. overall) advantage:
Some problems of the Ukrainian forces he acknowledges:
But both sides are still operationally capable:
Opinions
Some more opinions he has, that I think are interesting or spicy:
Thinks Ukraine is deliberately supplied "just enough" to stop Russia, but not enough to defeat them. He thinks this is to limit escalation. He basically frames this as the West trying to maintain balance, trying to signal to Russia that they cannot win. (He doesn't think this is working and Russia isn't going to walk away.)
During the Kherson withdrawal he seems to think some kind of deal was made, as per the above logic. Doesn't elaborate too much.
Cites US numbers of about equal 100k casualties on both sides.
Ukraine trapped Russian advance during Kiev offensive. Russia underestimated Ukrainian territorial defense (non-professional units). Territorial defense got rolled over during Russian offensive, and then successfully attacked logistics behind enemy lines, prompting Russian retreat. (Some say this was a diversion and/or the withdrawal was Russian goodwill gesture during peace talks.) He also blames Russia for Butcha, saying it was reprisal for this defeat.
Ukrainian artillery has faster latency thanks to StarLink and targeting app. Also praises high-precision artillery shells. He apparently thinks Ukraine has overall faster reaction times and intel advantage, thanks to the US.
Seems to think the AGM88 anti-radar air-to-ground missiles had significant impact. (Another thing I've heard very different opinions on.)
Kadyrov and Prigoshin are a joke.
NATO needs to go all-in if they want to win.
Russia shot 5300+ missiles and drones, Ukraine says they intercepted 900.
Kadyrov? That Chechen fucker? Hate him. Baby faced bitch
In Ukraine? I don't think so, Ukraine conscripted a million men