back in my map era, we’re ukrainemaxxing right now
Declarations of the imminent doom of Ukraine are a news megathread specialty, and this is not what I am doing here - mostly because I’m convinced that whenever we do so, the war extends another three months to spite us. Ukraine has been in an essentially apocalyptic crisis for over a year now after the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive, unable to make any substantial progress and resigned to merely being a persistent nuisance (and arms market!) as NATO fights to the last Ukrainian. In this context, predicting a terminal point is difficult, as things seem to always be going so badly that it’s hard to understand how and why they fight on. In every way, Ukraine is a truly shattered country, barely held together by the sheer combined force of Western hegemony. And that hegemony is weakening.
I therefore won’t be giving any predictions of a timeframe for a Ukrainian defeat, but the coming presidency of Trump is a big question mark for the conflict. Trump has talked about how he wishes for the war to end and for a deal to be made with Putin, but Trump also tends to change his mind on an issue at least three or four times before actually making a decision, simply adopting the position of who talked to him last. And, of course, his ability to end the war might be curtailed by a military-industrial complex (and various intelligence agencies) that want to keep the money flowing.
The alignment of the US election with the accelerating rate of Russian gains is pretty interesting, with talk of both escalation and de-escalation coinciding - the former from Biden, and the latter from Trump. Russia very recently performed perhaps the single largest aerial attack of Ukraine of the entire war, striking targets across the whole country with missiles and drones from various platforms. In response, the US is talking about allowing Ukraine to hit long-range targets in Russia (but the strategic value of this, at this point, seems pretty minimal).
Additionally, Russia has made genuine progress in terms of land acquisition. We aren’t talking about endless and meaningless battles over empty fields anymore. Some of the big Ukrainian strongholds that we’ve been spending the last couple years speculating over - Chasiv Yar, Kupiansk, Orikhiv - are now being approached and entered by Russian forces. The map is actually changing now, though it’s hard to tell as Ukraine is so goddamn big.
Attrition has finally paid off for Russia. An entire generation of Ukrainians has been fed into the meat grinder. Recovery will take, at minimum, decades - more realistically, the country might be permanently ruined, until that global communist revolution comes around at least. And they could have just made a fucking deal a month into the war.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
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 all socially reactionary. 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 ~ A 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. Produces interesting and useful maps.
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 Telegram Channels:
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.
Betting pool
Nothing ever happens
If this happens, I would bet on it being by accident. I would bet good money on Russia trying their best to make sure the current Ukrainian civilian and military leadership senior remains in place, because the senior leadership in place are extremely predictable.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think Russia should (and probably will) see it more as a red guideline or at the very least not respond in an equivalent way, just enough to express displeasure.
It’s the right move too IMO because Russia is winning and winning at a pace not yet seen before. To use a sports analogy, what NATO is doing now is the thing where you’re down 2-0 and time is running out; so you start chirping at the other team and playing dirty to get them off their game and maybe get them to draw a foul. Of course the right thing for the team in the lead is to swallow your pride and ignore it; stay on your game because if you do, you win. The only way Russia can lose right now is if NATO gets significantly more involved, and they can’t do that without some sort of fig leaf casus belli. That’s what NATO is trying to do with the DPRK troops thing, but rightly no one is buying it. Russia cannot give NATO anything they can use as a reason to get involved.
They could retaliate in a different theater or via proxies and then there would be no risk of escalation.
Giving the Syrians massive mercenary companies and modern equipment to wipe out the American proxy bases in Syria for example, or providing Ansarallah with a bunch more high-tech missiles.
They could also give Iran a nuke.
Honestly this is what I expect. They will launch massive airstrikes against Ukraine in retaliation for this and call it a day imo.
Cold winter attacks - I bet they go hard at substations that connect ukraine to the EU grid.
Was listening to this Polish osint guy yesterday throw out some ideas about possible Russian responses to escalation:
As much as I would love to see Ansarallah get some really good anti-ship missiles, the US is likely going to see that as a massive escalation. Russia would be an accomplice in potentially sinking an American capital ship. I don’t think just hitting Kursk would be seen as “equivalent”. There’s definitely a time and place up the escalation ladder for giving Ansarallah those missiles, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet.
They hit Bryansk in addition to Kursk. They are already breaking the guidelines Biden put in place
He was saying in the same interview he thinks the ‘Kursk only’ limit was some sort of media disinformation and if Ukraine is getting more ATACMS (they don’t have many right now) from US storage then the US plans to use them at the full 300 km range, which covers around 15 Russian airports, but Russia evacuated most of their airplanes from those airports because ATACMS use has apparently been discussed for a few months now, so these new attacks might disrupt some Russian fuel depots or ammo depots, but also those kinds of spots have already been hit by Ukrainian drones up to 1000km deep in Russia, so it’s not some game changer for the war like western politicians or media might want to present it. His ‘Russian response list’ was thinking about a scenario where the US keeps using ATACMS at the full range from now on.
I’m not a military head so i don’t know, I assume Russia will not be provoked to do anything fast but will answer when they think the time is right.
Nuclear weapons test in Iran to really shake the US military planner cages
it’s a great time to live next to the largest military base in the state
Decapitation strike is the most sane variant, which is why they won’t do it. Red guideline is my vote.
(alternatively, bombing embassy, but that would need to be british one, american is too nuts)
Red guidline
Iran could also get the bomb, and/or North Korea could get a miniaturised version of the bomb for use in their Short Range Ballistic Missiles (SRBMs) and for MIRV warheads for their new ICBM with over 15 000km range.
I think Ansar Allah/The Houthis getting advanced anti ship supersonic cruise missiles is the most likely option, Hezbollah got 12 of them at one stage.
PLEASE
It’s a very symmetrical response but it would piss of the Saudi’s