Image is of Putin and Scholz sitting on opposite ends of a frighteningly long table back in 2022. Folks, the table is gonna get ten feet longer.
The latest round of US-Russian diplomacy is taking place on August 15th in Alaska, where Putin and Trump are meeting in-person to maybe try and bring an end to this godforsaken conflict. While I don’t want to totally discount the possibility that they may come to an agreement - you truly never know! - there’s a lot stacked against this encounter yielding much of anything.
Russia appears to have demanded a land swap; that Ukraine fully withdraw from Kherson and Zaporozhye oblasts (in exchange for unspecified Russian gains, but probably parts of Sumy and Kharkov) as a precondition for a ceasefire that could perhaps lead to a permanent resolution of the conflict, and Ukraine seems completely unwilling to do anything of the sort, saying that even if they wanted to, the process of just giving up a couple oblasts would take significant time and require referendums. I say that Russia has appeared to demand it, because there’s been a lot of confusion - probably in bad faith - about what Russian diplomats and Putin himself have said and what the demands even are. There are some who speculate that Trump will sell out Ukraine and blame Zelensky for refusing to agree with Russian demands, and there are others who say that this just the latest of many examples of the US and Russia meeting up with such fundamental differences that a deal is impossible, and that Trump fully expects to put sanctions on Russia after Putin declines some harebrained American scheme.
Anyway. After the summit, in late August, Putin is due to arrive for a visit to India, at Modi’s invitation. Previously, I was unsure exactly what India would do in response to American sanctions pressure, and now we appear to be receiving an answer, as Modi has made public statements that suggest that he is only getting closer to Russia. Fascinatingly, Modi will soon make his first visit to China in seven years at the annual SCO summit at the end of August, and Putin will be heading to China too on September 3rd. There is an increasing amount of dismissal about the potential of BRICS (especially one that contains India), and that dismissal is certainly rather justified, but I am still deeply curious about what developments may occur as the global south braces to face the remaining ~85% of Trump’s presidency.
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Israel's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
“defending”. Do you mean in rhetoric? To be clear, I think the person you responded to is just factually wrong about Putin’s history. But what difference does it make at this moment between 1. supporting Putin but noting his historical mistakes and 2. Supporting Putin and not noting his historical mistakes. And is that also the difference between “critical” and “blanket” support? Is it lying which shifts it into “blanket” support? I’m just skeptical that anyone actually ever does this “blanket” support. That means that all support is critical, some just also hedge the ability to later say ‘i told you so’ if it goes wrong
I never talk about him as an anti-communist because right now he’s been forced into fighting on the progressive side of history. If the point is that he will make mistakes that we must account for, then I’m good for that. But I still just don’t see how that’s different than any other support that’s ever given
Not sure why you put the word in quotation marks, and I’m not sure what you are confused about. Have you looked at this thread?
‘Mistakes’ are something unintentional. Putin’s government’s anti-communist actions are not unintentional, nor are they being noted.
There are also other people in this thread in addition to xiaohongshu who are doing that.
If you think that this stuff doesn’t matter in some sense, and that that is a cause to not speak about it, then I would argue that you should apply the same standards to speaking in favour of Putin and his government without any sort of acknowledgement of their bad actions.
Again, not sure what you are confused about. Supporting Russia’s anti-NATO actions is fine. Supporting Russia’s actions against communists, as well as attacking those who criticise those actions is not.
That’s the generous interpretation of defense of anti-communist actions by polities and people that are presently opposed to NATO. A less generous interpretation would be that relevant people support some, but not all of the Russian government’s anti-communist (and other bad) actions in an incoherent manner.
There are people in this thread who are defending Putin’s anti-communist actions from criticism.
Pushing people like ones who literally worked for Goebbels into school programs and elsewhere as somebody to agree with is not a ‘mistake’.
We agree on literally every point that you’re making. I’m not trying to join the discussion you were having before in defense on the other posters. I probably shouldn’t have used the term “mistakes” because I agree that there was intentionality, so please replace those with “failures” or something of that caliber.
I’m trying to understand how you understand “critical support” to work, because I see it called up often and am convinced it’s a fairly meaningless term. I see the person you responded to doing support for Putin’s anti-Nato+being mistaken/lying about anti-comm actions. I see you doing support for Putin’s anti-Nato+not support of anti-comm actions. Is critical support anytime you have a pro and con for somebody? I usually see it used more for “I support this person, but not all the way, just partially” with the separation being in time, not in category of support. So I’m trying to figure out what you meant.
But I think I already get what you’re saying. So no need to respond fully or whatever. I’m just unconvinced that anyone ever really does anything other than critical support. Even if the person you’re responding to is lying for Putin for some reason, they likely have their own boundaries for their support.