Thread image created by yours truly, depicting Iran and Pakistan very impolitely not asking whether America, on the other side of the planet, is okay with them transporting gas around.
The Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline has long been obstructed by American involvement in the region. Iran completed its section of the pipeline quite quickly, but Pakistan has been unable to finish its construction for a decade due to the fear of falling afoul of American sanctions on Iran. The United States has repeatedly tried to pressure Pakistan to give up the project and obtain gas from other countries instead. Recent articles on the state of the pipeline are contradictory, with some stating that Iran or Pakistan have given up on the pipeline while American sanctions persist. Pakistani officials reject this framing, saying that they are still working with Iran to try and get the project completed somehow. Nonetheless, Iran is becoming increasingly frustrated and is threatening a legal battle and a demand for reparations.
Meanwhile, back in Niger, the $13 billion under-construction pipeline connecting Nigeria and other West African countries to Spain and Italy will likely face delays due to the sanctions applied by the West and ECOWAS on Niger. Those following the European gas fiasco will be aware that while Spain and Italy have been impacted by the energy crisis, they have been very busy making deals with African countries to replace their Russian gas, and thus stand a better chance than Germany of making it through the crisis with their industries somewhat intact. The coup has thrown a wrench into their plans, though they can still obtain some gas from northern African countries.
And, last but not least, America tried for years to stop the construction of the Nord Stream pipelines between Germany and Russia, which culminated in them deciding to blow them up late last year.
All in all - the United States really does not like it when countries build up energy infrastructure and gain some independence from them.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
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
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
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.
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 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
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.
Geopolitics Special Edition: the Moon
As you may know, the race is on for India vs Russia to be the first country to land on the lunar south pole, an unusually challenging site on the moon with treacherous terrains and craters stretching thousands of kms.
Fun facts about their predecessors
This will be India’s third attempt with their moon missions. The last mission, Chandrayaan-2 (which means “mooncraft” in Sanskrit), was launched in September 2019 but due to a software glitch, the Vikram Lander veered off course and crashed. However, the orbiter stayed on the moon’s orbit and in April 2021, with an optical camera (OHRC) with the highest resolution mapping the moon’s surface to date, was able to send back a photo of Apollo 11’s Eagle descent stage. The Americans did land on the moon. Checkmate conspiracy theorists.
Meanwhile, the last time Russia conducted a moon mission (Luna-24, which means “moon” in Russian) was in… 1976! It was actually the Soviet Union, and this will be post-Soviet Russia’s first attempt at a moon mission, practically a reboot of the space industry. Did you know that Luna-24 was the third time the Soviet Union carried back soil samples from the moon and was the first to discovered water in the regolith (moon soil)? The scientific findings were published in 1978 and almost nobody noticed.
Who will be the first to land on the lunar south pole
So, you have India aiming to have its first successful moon landing mission, and Russia who hasn’t been back to the moon in 47 years. And what makes this race particularly interesting is that both not only target the lunar south pole as their landing sites, but apparently also had their mission timeframe coinciding closely (merely a week apart) and will land relatively close to one another:
With India’s Chandrayaan-3 (Чандраян-3) targeting an error within 500m, and Russia’s Luna-25 (Луна-25) with a 3 km error.
Actually, both missions had been delayed by a year. Chandrayaan-3 was supposed to launch back in August 2022, but was delayed due to COVID lockdown affecting several projects. Meanwhile, Luna-25 was supposed to launch in October-November 2022, but the war in Ukraine caused several European collaborations to be ceased, forcing Roskosmos to reproduce the components indigenously.
India’s Chandrayaan-3 was launched several weeks ago, on July 14, entered Moon’s orbit on August 5, and is expected to land on August 22-23. Owing to its larger payload (3800kg vs Luna-25’s 1750kg), its journey will take slightly longer than the Russian’s.
Once landed, if successful, the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover, both solar powered, will have about 1 lunar day (14.5 Earth days) to conduct its scientific missions. They are not designed to survive the cold and harsh night on the moon.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Luna-25 is a lander only without a rover, but is equipped with a plutonium-based radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) that will provide heat and power throughout the night, and is expected to last for about 1 year.
The Luna-25 was launched on August 10, and is expected to land on August ~~17-19~~ 21-22 (updated dates):
Just less than 24 hours earlier, on August 16 11:57 MSK, Luna-25 switched on the propulsion system of its automatic station. The first activation was performed by a corrective braking engine that lasted 243 seconds. And the second - the soft landing engines, lasted 76 seconds. At 12:03 MSK, Luna-25 has entered the moon’s orbit.
All systems are functioning normally, communication is stable. From here, at a height of 100km lunar orbit, Luna-25 will spend the next 3 days making 36 orbits around the moon.
Which means that over the next ~~48 hours~~ few days, the most critical stage will happen - will a soft landing take place successfully?
If so, then Russia will claim the first landing spot on the moon’s south pole. If not, then the Indians will have their shot immediately after on August 22-23. The race is on for a nail-biting finish.
Why is the Indian probe using such a weird and time-consuming approach? Do they have so save energy, in other words not enough power in their upper stage for a direct moon shot? I've always wondered about these things, no clue about that part of physics.
I'm not an expert but I've played a good amount of KSP. It looks like India is using a periapsis kick. Instead of one burn at periapsis (bottom of the orbit) it uses a bunch, once for each orbit. This lets them use a weaker engine which lets them save weight. You want to do most of your burns at the periapsis because that's when the spacecraft is moving fastest and that makes burns more efficient because of the Oberth Effect. Burning only at periapsis is what makes orbits shaped like that, when you do an orbital burn the shape of the orbit near where you're burning barely changes and the biggest change is 180 degrees from where you are.
When the probe is orbiting the moon it does the same process in reverse. Repeated burns at periapsis to lower the apoapsis (highest part of the orbit) until the orbit is low enough to do a single burn to land the probe.