Bulletins and News Discussion from November 18th to November 24th, 2024 - Could It Soon Be Azover? - COTW: Ukraine
Bulletins and News Discussion from November 18th to November 24th, 2024 - Could It Soon Be Azover? - COTW: Ukraine
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.
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More alleged ATACMS strikes on Kursk, Russia by the United States and Ukraine within the last two hours. It seems that the use of the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) weapons system by Russia, in the MIRV and submunition capable Oreshnik IRBM, has not deterred the US and Ukraine from launching strikes and attacks against Russia within Russia's internationally recognised borders. Expect a Russian response if these do indeed turn out to be ATACMS missiles.
Video:
You can see the alleged ATACMS missile in it's terminal phase of flight, as well as hearing an apparent sonic boom, just before the explosion at the beginning of the video, I'll screenshot it and post it below:
Oh my they are really going to get us all killed.
I know this isn't news, but living in a country bordering Russia whose ruling class has decided to side with the fucking Empire of Imperialism and throw us to the wolves is wild. I have a child who is in draft age and I am genuinely starting to lose my shit.
I keep trying to think of ways to gtfo from here if things go truly wrong and we are kind of fucked from all sides thanks to the Baltic sea. But my commie kid will not be sent to die for these ghouls, they can draft him over my dead body.
In "positive" news, at least Oreshnik is not a nuclear weapon, so if Russia does decide to fire one into Europe, the nukes won't start flying immediately. Russia has committed to giving advanced warnings for Oreshnik IRBM strikes, they say in order to minimise civilian casualties. I think it's so an Oreshnik strike is not mistaken for a nuclear strike, when the missile is launched. CPS weapons change the escalation model and calculus in a potential NATO - Russia conflict.
But yes, it does seem that the US, and certain NATO members in the UK and France, are determined to die on this hill, the rest of us be damned. They are prepared to directly participate in attacks against Russia while hiding behind Ukraine as a shield, and risk a potential nuclear war. It's absolutely maddening and anxiety inducing.
If the weapons start flying between Europe and Russia, I hope you make it to safety.
Yes I read Putins speech and trust that a warning would come.
But meanwhile the natohawks here are planning to put a nato base right next to the Russian border and point guns at them. It's looking grim.
My kid opted out from military service, but due to the draft has to still do civil service or go to jail. In ww2 the Whites put leftists like him to the front to scout for mines or into a corps core where they had to enter the combat zone to retrieve the dead, the ones that survived were scarred for life and abandonded. There were work camps and concentration camps for them. This shit keeps me up at night.
Thank you for the solidarity.
Yes I read Putins speech and trust that a warning would come.
For me it's not about trust, trust can be easily broken. For me it's that there's a mutual interest not to start a nuclear conflict (at least I hope so, despite all the risk taking by NATO), and an Oreshnik launch, or similar CPS launch, could easily be mistaken for a nuclear weapons launch, so there will be advanced warnings to prevent any cases of "mistaken identity" with regards to it being a conventional weapon or a nuclear weapon.
This shit keeps me up at night.
It also does, and I don't even live in a NATO country or Russia.
The problem is that NATO does not have an equivalent response, so to escalate they will have to use low yield nukes on Russia’s territory.
That is true, though they should be easily able to create and deploy one if required. The first candidate for a CPS weapon was actually a MIRV capable Trident SLBM (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile) with conventional warheads/kinetic energy penetrators, or tungsten submunitions. This idea was raised during the Bush Jr administration. This was eventually abandoned as it was theorised to appear too similar to a nuclear weapons launch. The Obama administration did prototype a CPS weapons system based on the MIRV capable Minuteman III ICBM in 2010 though, so the option for such a weapon is still on the table, even as the United States' hypersonic weapons program, that was set to be the prime candidate for a CPS weapons system instead of ICBM and SLBM based systems, is in shambles.
A constant conventional missile exchange between NATO and Russia easily has the ability to snowball into a nuclear conflict though...
Oreshnik is absolutely a nuclear weapon. That's its whole purpose, and why Russia provided an advance warning
It could easily be converted a nuclear weapon if the need arises, but that is not the current intention.
Putin claimed in his second press conference that Oreshnik is a novel, strictly non-nuclear system that is not a WMD, developed very rapidly, describing it as a precision-strike weapon capable of hitting targets across Europe.
So for now the intention does not seem to be a nuclear weapon, but a CPS weapon.
What? Any ballistic missile attack on Europe immediately triggers responses from the US and the nuclear armed states in the EU. The intention has to be nuclear, since its use would trigger nuclear war
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/11/why-these-new-russian-missiles-are-real-game-changers.html
Here are the words straight from Putin's mouth.
It is not a strategic weapon, it is not a weapon of mass destruction.
Fucking hell! This is so fucking irresponsible. I'm so glad Putin isn't an insane and insecure little fucking shit like biden and his cronies. I hope Russia levels the us and british embassies in kiev this time.
It's extremely irresponsible and NATO has decided to continue these attacks. I have no idea what the next target will be, Putin did say that military assets of countries supplying the weapons and intelligence for these attacks are potential targets. If I was stationed in a US military base in Europe somewhere, I would be very worried right now.
He wont escalate by striking deeper into Europe that is a world ending decision. He may target occupation forces in Syria but even that is not worth the fall out. Crossing this red line at this point is an act of pettiness and Putin is too smart to fall for it by over escalating. If he does decide to respond to these attacks ukraine will be the one punished.
I saw some chatter about a nato base in Poland today, I'll try to find it.
Edit. Found it, this is an account posting about it on Fedi. Not a nato base, but a US missile defense base. No idea how trustworthy this is.
Biden is calling Putin’s bluff. He doesn’t believe Russia will strike NATO installations for real. It’s Putin’s move now.
Or rather, Biden wants a small scale nuclear war at Europe’s periphery. That’d accelerate his plan of getting white Europeans to move to America now that he doesn’t have another 4 years to brew this out.
Biden knows Putin would rather wait him out for 2 months than get involved in a nuclear war so he is taking every step he can to piss Putin off. This makes biden look petty, pathetic, and weak but also the us armed forces. All the commander and chief of the us armed forces can muster is a few explosions at bases a few km over the border while Putin is dropping meteors. Biden is single handedly exposing usa as a paper tiger and that will be his legacy and I hope he lives long enough to really understand this was what he did.
Yes this strike is absolutely calling Putin's bluff, along with France now saying that Ukraine can use their version of the Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missile for deep strikes into Russian territory. The ball is absolutely in Putin's court, and now we wait to see if he really will target NATO installations with CPS weapons like Oreshnik, or any other IRBMs or MRBMs Russia may have that we do not know about.
NATO's nuclear doctrine is set to be revised (apparently with regards to the B61 tactical nuclear weapon) after Russia unveiled the novel Oreshnik IRBM, so there is an element of nuclear posturing. How real it is, we'll only know once the missiles, bombs and strategic bomber aircraft start flying...
What an exciting time to be alive
We see that work is active around the world on developing high‐precision conventional weapons systems that in their strike capabilities come close to strategic nuclear weapons. Countries that have such weapons substantially increase their offensive capability.
- Vladimir Putin, 19 June 2013.
CPS weapons allow "to realize such opportunities as the creation of high precision strategic weapons with non-nuclear warheads and a practical global range. Russia can create non-nuclear, high precision weapons based on intercontinental rockets in the event that the USA also works on designing such a weapon".
- Commander of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, Sergey Karakaev, 31 December 2012.
Russia has been warning NATO for over a decade now. NATO needs to start listening.
wonder who really has control of the nuclear button since Joe Biden is non compos mentis. will we even know who consigned us to destruction
Posadas walked so Blinken could run.