Image is of Russian mercenary Frodonov Bagginsky, standing in the ruins of Bakhmut after the battle concluded.

After nearly a year of intense fighting for the town of Bakhmut, Russian forces have finally reached full control.

While tens of thousands of lives have ended in the area in and around Bakhmut, perhaps almost as interesting as the battle itself has been the war of narratives over it. The state propagandists in the West have spent a lot of effort muddying the waters about the battle for the city, to the extent that the two sides now live in effectively separate realities.

If you are pro-Ukraine, the reality you observe is that this was an excellent maneuver by the Ukrainians - as the Russians send in their troops in human wave attacks armed only with shovels, you have achieved a 1:7 casualty ratio in your favor. You have fundamentally weakened the Russian army because, for some inscrutable reason, they have decided to attack one of the strongest parts of your front line - this reveals the inherent stupidity of the Ruskies. Let them have the city for all you care - it has zero importance and you will soon recapture it. You are, in fact, one step closer to winning the war - far from losing it.

If you are pro-Russian, the reality you observe is that this was an excellent maneuver by the Russians. By utilizing your massive artillery advantage over the enemy side, sometimes achieving over ten times the number of shells fired on any given day, you can easily attrit enemy forces and you have done so, achieving a 1:7 casualty ratio in your favor. As Bakhmut is a central city in the fortification line, Ukraine has no choice but to defend it with all their strength, which allowed you to create a cauldron which has been the death of tens of thousands of troops, at the expense of only mercenaries. The logistical links that capturing the city has both created for you and severed for the enemy will make future campaigns easier, and you are now capable of advancing into territory that hasn't spent the last eight years being fortified by all NATO has to offer. You are, in fact, one step closer to winning the war - far from losing it.

While I would love to be a very smart enlightened centrist and go "Well, both sides have a point here..." all evidence I can discern points to the Russian position and away from the Ukrainian one. When Zelensky went to the US and spoke before Congress earlier this year, he said:

To ensure Bakhmut is not just a stronghold that holds back the Russian Army, but for the Russian Army to completely pull out, more cannons and shells are needed. If so, just like the Battle of Saratoga, the fight for Bakhmut will change the trajectory of our war for independence and for freedom.

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.

This week's third update is here in the comments.

Links and Stuff

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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.

  • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Chinese scientists war-game hypersonic strike on US carrier group in South China Sea

    Over 20 intense battles, Chinese forces sank the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier fleet with a volley of 24 hypersonic anti-ship missiles, in a simulation run on a mainstream war game software platform used by China’s military.

    The researchers, led by Cao Hongsong from the North University of China, said almost every US surface vessel was shattered by the attack and eventually sank in the simulation.

    The war games suggested the US carrier group – previously regarded as unsinkable by conventional weapons – could be “destroyed with certainty” by a relatively small number of hypersonic strikes, they said.

    :sicko-pig:

    • mkultrawide [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      There are only two types of ships in a modern navy: submarines and targets.

      • WashedAnus [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Too bad you can't do anything but sink ships and lob cruise missiles at hospitals with submarines. No blockades, no landing forces (except small death squads), no force projection; just a small number of torpedoes and cruise missiles.

          • WashedAnus [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Boats just sail over the top. Contemporary submarines might have a crew-served machine gun or two topside, but those have to be stowed below decks to submerge. There aren't uboats with deck guns anymore, those make too much noise in the water.

            Like, you could use your multibillion dollar submarines to blockade something, but a cargo ship could just ram it and then you've got a nuclear incident and you're out a ton of money. Much easier to use surface craft, which are equipped for that kind of thing.

            • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Also, if hypersonics are in play, you can probably hit a sub on the surface before they even know they're in danger.

                • CoolerOpposide [none/use name]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  At that speed, the water basically acts like a solid, so probably not. The projectile would almost certainly be shredded on impact

                • MoreAmphibians [none/use name]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  Hypersonics can barely deal with the thick air at the surface, they would get shredded if they impacted the water. Supercavitating torpedoes would be the underwater equivalent to hypersonics but even then they're probably excessive. In modern times you usually just use a helicopter to deliver a torpedo to an area and then the torpedo travels underwater for the last leg. There are also some torpedoes that are rocket-launched and fly in the air until they drop into the water.

                  Submarines aren't hard to hit if you know where they are, it's finding them that's hard. Explosives also work much better underwater than they do in air.

                • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  My first thought is targeting it underwater would probably make things harder? I imagine you can lob a hypersonic starting with a satellite image of a sub on the surface or something, but maybe you still need to have a nearby radar on it. Underwater I'm guessing you'd need another sub or drone sub doing active sonar.

                • keepcarrot [she/her]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  Yes, but you'd have to find it first. Potentially the munition would be different too.

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I wonder if they've been observing the Russian strikes and getting information on responsiveness to them. They're a great example of use and given that the lack of time to respond to these missiles is a major part of their effectiveness seeing exactly how those responses go down must give them some confidence.

    • Wildgrapes [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The underlying principle of the war game was to be “lenient with the enemy and strict with oneself”, Cao said.

      So the opposite of what the US does in war games. See the minimum challenge

    • meth_dragon [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      'mainstream war game software platform'

      my god, the ambiguity is killing me

      how hilarious would it be if it was revealed that everyone around the world just plugs shit into cmano and calls it a day

      edit: does cmano even have achievements? "achieve pk of over .8 with pl12s in one mission within 750nms of kaohsiung!"

      edit2: ok so apparently the version they used was a chinese fork of the research version of cmano with beefed up blufor unit stats. cool cool