Image is of a solar park in Cuba, donated last year by China, sourced from this article.
To be honest, I don't have much to say about ongoing geopolitical events that hasn't already been said in previous threads (e.g. with India/Pakistan, Trump/Putin, and of course occupied Palestine), so this is more of a "news roundup" preamble for this week.
As we all know, the US (and the imperial core generally) has only three permitted international actions: sanctions, color revolution, and war. None of these have been going well lately, but sanctions are in particularly dire straits right now. Three examples from the last week or so:
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The EU is on its 17th sanctions package, apparently, which is surprising, as I thought they were on their 76th or something. It apparently targets Russia's shadow fleet of oil tankers, but I don't think anybody actually gives a shit because we all know it won't achieve anything, so, moving on...
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The head of Nvidia (as well as many others) have come out and said that the US chip export controls on China have failed, remarking that China's internal motivations to develop alternatives are strong and proceeding rapidly, especially as China's number of skilled scientists is only growing. Nvidia has said that they had a 95% share of China's AI chip market in 2020 or so, but now they only have 50%.
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Lastly, an interesting one: Iran has received its first set of railway shipment of solar panels from China, and there is hope for accelerating shipments of even more products. Myself and many others have predicted a decoupling of Iran from the West and towards China and Russia (especially if any Western-built product could have Israeli devices implanted into them, such as with the pager terrorist attack on Lebanon's doctors), and having a strong link with China will be a necessary step for Iran and their allies to continue their offensives against Israel.
Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
What can Russia do to counter the renewed escalation to the same extent? Does someone have to prevent Russia from using nuclear weapons?
The events over the past 48 hours (yesterday's terrorist attack on the train bridge that killed seven civilians and today's drone attacks on airbases that caused no casualties and only minor material damage) will not change the overall strategy. In a major military operation, these were militarily insignificant events. Basically, we've just seen another glorified Western imperialist propaganda stunt, like the terrorist car bombing of the Crimean Bridge that killed three civilians back in October of 2022, but changed nothing strategically.
Russia's war of attrition strategy is working and does not need any major adjustments. Russia can accept the West doubling down and continuing to aid its Kiev proxies because while doing so the West can not easily attack or undermine China, which means that the new multipolar world order will win in the end. In addition, the Kiev regime will inevitably run out of large masses of conscripts and collapse. Nuclear weapons would never be used against any Kiev regime occupied territories, because these are historically Russian lands and peoples.
I would say the destruction of multiple Tu-95s is a bit more than minor. It won't change the final result of the war, but it is a fairly significant setback since these are the main plane that carries Russia's standoff munitions, and since Russia's MIC is like the adeptus mechanicus they only really have the ability to maintain them. Production of new airframes would be a big undertaking over many years.
That said, there are probably a fair number of Tu-95s still operational (Ukrainian media usually just makes up a ridiculously inflated damage numbers as we know) and they can always increase usage of the Tu-22m and Tu-160 if required.
Has there been any confirmation the bridge was attacked?
Yes, it has been reported that the bridge was blown up. The investigation is still ongoing.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20250601/bridge-collapses-disrupt-rail-traffic-in-russias-bryansk--kursk-regions-seven-dead-and-66-injured-1122163963.html
"Bryansk Governor Alezandr Bogomaz later stated that the bridge had been intentionally blown up."
I don't think the nuclear option will be used.
Least escalation: More Russian missile attacks on Ukraine, either a larger version of the usual attacks or potentially with Oreshnik or a newly unveiled system, to try reign Ukraine in.
Most escalation: Russia concludes it cannot defend against deep strikes or reign Ukraine in alone, decides to try solve the issue by carrying out conventional demonstration strikes against NATO (using Oreshnik or a newly unveiled system) to get NATO to try reign Ukraine in.
There's a lot of options in between, but I think that's where we are at right now.
Could Russia escalate the war with full mobilization and all-out warfare, or would that be pointless because it's already stretched to its limits militarily?
Russia could do an official declaration of war and switch to a full wartime economy, but the question is if the political will exists to do that. What will happen when office workers in Moscow get conscripted and thrown to the frontlines, or get forced to build tanks in a factory somewhere? Is Russian society ready for that?
More likely escalation there is the opening of a new front in Ukraine within the existing stocks and resources, rather than full-time mobilisation.
I don't think they'll do that for 40 planes. Keeping them in the open without any protection is their fault anyways.
Start throwing US bank executives off high rises.
how
Same way he does it in Russia.
win it faster in the actuall groundwar, and spend whats necessary for it. But Putin would never.
and Copecages of course..