The image is of Russians in Rostov climbing up a Wagner tank.
New thread's preamble:
What a mess. The amount of information going around is hard to determine, but we know with relative certainty:
- Wagner forces are in Rostov near the Defence Ministry building and are fortifying it; the Russian army and Chechens are en route
- A/several Wagner column is moving from Rostov to Moscow, and along the way Russia is setting up barriers and blocking roads, but it seems like Wagner is spreading out through western Russia wherever they can go.
- Prigozhin has no support from any internal force that we currently know of.
update: Lukashenko has saved Putin's ass. At least, that's the current narrative I'm going with - further analysis will probably change perceptions of the situation.
Old thread's preamble:
Mali's military government - which overthrew the old military government last year - has called on the UN to withdraw its peacekeeping forces in the MINUSMA program (the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali), which is the third largest peacekeeping force in the world. It was established in 2012 in the wake of the Tuareg Rebellion, in which the northern half the country, calling itself Azawad, began a fight for independence from the southern side.
The "official" fighting was over relatively quickly - the Malian military, with the help of France, retook most of the country in a year or two. But insurgencies continue to plague the region, with local militias and Islamic State jihadists taking advantage of the chaos. The idea behind the UN mission is to stabilize the situation and patrol the area - this has made it the second deadliest mission so far.
After a decade of not much progress being made, first the French pulled out in August 2022 after anti-French protests inside the country, and now the MINUSMA force is being asked to pull out after similar protests. The Russian UN ambassador has said:
“The real issue is not the number of peacekeepers but the functions, and one of the key tasks for the government of Mali is fighting terrorism, which is not provided for in the mandate of the blue helmets,”
Additionally, MINUSMA released a report last year stating that the Malian government (with the help of "foreign military elements" of which the implication is the Wagner Group) has accelerated civilian killings and human rights abuses, which hasn't made the mission more likeable to the government, I would imagine.
Update on the situation in Mali:
The rebel coalition in the north, the CSP-PSD (Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development - man, this sounds like it was named in a Washington DC office), has said that if the UN mission is pulled out as the military government is demanding, then this would be a "fatal blow" to the peace accord and threaten regional stability. The coalition previously withdrew from the negotiating table back in December as they grew impatient with the two successive military governments, and it's possible that more active fighting will continue in Mali soon. MINUSMA's mandate runs out on June 30th and if it isn't renewed by then, we may see an orderly withdrawal of UN forces taking about a year, leaving Mali by itself (and, I suppose, the Wagner Group).
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[(https://hexbear.net/comment/3553612) in the comments.
This week's third 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.
psyop or not, coup or not, real or not, what I can say with absolute, unequivocal certainty is that the kind Vladimir Ilyich would have shot everybody in the Russian government if he were here today
Setting the posting record of 1.6k comments on the stupidest day of the war (so far), nice job everybody. Unfortunately the thread is melting so the new thread will be up tomorrow morning for me (about 8 hours from now) instead of on Monday. Next bulletin will be on Monday as normal.
on another note: does anybody else hope that we never hear from Prigozhin again? I hope he just fades into obscurity. Maybe Kadyrov returns to the spotlight. Maybe Surovikin becomes a poster. We shall see. Though it really puts us in new territory now. Bakhmut's consolidated, the counteroffensive looks to be feckless, the dam is broken, and Prigozhin is, inshallah, finally gone. Next up: the ZNPP?
Gigachad to virgin cuck stats after today's events:
Gigachad Chad Neutral Beta Male Virgin Cuck Lukashenko (saved the SMO) Arestovich (funny dude who riles up everyone) Prigozhin (got owned, but had the balls to do a coup) Putin (beta who won the fight, but still got owned) Shoigu (being a virgin allowed this shit to happen) Surovikin (sneaked his way into being an undisputed chad) Kadyrov (certified entertainer) Zelensky (actor president still standing) Zaluzhny (the man begged for months and just got sidelined hard) The collective west (they keep getting owned) Hexbear having outages at this time is proof that the site is handled by the russian government. Our servers are being liberated by Wagner
U.S. to Delay New Sanctions on Wagner for Fear of Siding With Putin
https://archive.is/20230624163651/https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/russia-wagner-prigozhin-putin/card/u-s-to-delay-new-sanctions-on-wagner-for-fear-of-siding-with-putin-j1EeoFqeLaWE2tO4m6uY
the telegraph is now running a video called 'why ukrainian failures are not russian victories'
It’s only a coup if it’s from the D’Etat region of France, otherwise it’s just sparkling insurrection.
Reposting because it's still funny:
The Ukrainian offensive will reach Crimea in a week, NATO tanks are wunderwaffe
The Ukrainian offensive will take a while, there will be some losses
The Ukrainian offensive will at least take the grey zone in front of the Russian first line, heavy losses are to be expected
It's actually a good thing that Ukraine is cancelling the offensive, it means they're winning <--- NATO simps are here
https://twitter.com/declassifiedUK/status/1671475867967533059
'Ukraine Recovery Conference' is on in London, urging "international businesses" to invest in Ukraine in its "an ambitious reform agenda".
This includes "reducing the size of the government", "privatization", "deregulation" and "investment freedom".
never let a disaster go to waste
me, prior to June 24th 2023: "yeah, so the Russian state is in a good position right now, Putin's popularity is through the roof, it would take a seriously strong force to challenge the power of the government"
me, after June 24th 2023: "alrighty, so from now on we gotta pray that a strong breeze doesn't hit the Kremlin until at least the end of the war"
top level comments in the worldnews
thread about blinken & xi on US stance towards taiwan independence somehow aren't howling for blood. opinions in support of the status quo are typically buried at least halfway into the thread, what the fuck is going on?did eglin afb not get the message or something?
The Church of England clergy have, in the first time in their history, submitted a claim for an increase in the stipend that they receive.
If you pray during a priest strike you're crossing a picket line.
ISW: Ukrainian forces may be temporarily pausing counteroffensive operations to reevaluate tactics
The Institute for the Study of War quoted the head of the Estonian Defense Forces Intelligence Center Colonel Margo Grosberg who said on June 16 that "we won't see an offensive (operation by Ukraine) over the next seven days.”
The Wall Street Journal similarly reported on June 17 that Ukrainian forces “have mostly paused their advances in recent days” as Ukrainian command reexamines tactics.
These reports are consistent with ISW’s recent observations of the scale and approach of localized Ukrainian counterattacks in southern and eastern Ukraine.
https://archive.is/a3GXT
Given that Spring will be over in a few days, I think the Spring offensive can now officially be declared a failure.
But how can this be? I thought the the Russian forces were already 98% defeated??? Why don't the Ukrainians just walk in and win???
Germany only has 20,000 high explosive artillery shells left, report says -Reuters
20,000 artillery shells is about 1 days worth of shooting for the Russian artillery. Shell expenditure ranges from 10k-40k+ depending on intensity of the combat. Ukraine tends to be outshot by about 5-1 at best so this would be maybe 5+ days of shooting for Ukraine.
Germany's military needs to build up an inventory of some 230,000 shells by 2031 to comply with NATO goals to have enough artillery to withstand 30 days of intensive combat, Der Spiegel wrote.
230,000 shells wouldn't last anywhere near 30 days of intensive combat and 2031 is 8 years from now. It's truly incredible how neoliberalism makes accomplishing anything borderline impossible.
I find it funny when terminally online liberals LARPing as leftists project their onlineness onto others. No, my hatred and apathy against rich people won’t disappear because I “log off.” It’s not some quirky online personality. It’s called having a firm and consistent stance.
