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.
Two flights of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers (suspected to be one bomber per flight), on their way to Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, ahead of the Trump-Putin meeting. Elmendorf already has a lot of F-22 Raptor 5th generation stealth aircraft on station by default, the base was designed to accommodate 36 F-22s, and was home to more than 47 at one point. Expect a full "show of force" in an attempt to intimidate Putin and the Russian delegation, maybe similar to this photo, also from Elmendorf, but with B-2s as well:
Source on flight tracking, Xcancel
Twitter source
Russia, as previously reported, is likely planning a test of it's nuclear powered and nuclear armed cruise missile Burevestnik/Skyfall, soon.
Reuters article on that with satellite imagery of assets in place for a test
Pretty mild for a show of force, I mean how long would an Oreshinik take to hit this base, like 5 minutes or something? All this does is to let Russia know exactly when and where to hit to do the most damage on a first strike...
I think its more signaling to Americans and westerners than to Russia honestly, pretty Trump style, always the least effort to hoping to amplify it to something majestic or great. I think this is another attempt at him getting his big win and going back to his root trying to pass himself as some grand negotiator.
You can already hear the Trump voice "I got Putin to come to us, nobody elseeee did it, not even Joe did... He came and signed a beautiful deal, the greatest deal..."
If Russia opens fire on a USAF base located on the US homeland as the opening salvo in a US-Russia war, it's over for the world. Let's just be honest about that. There is no way in heaven or hell that Russia would even think of doing such. The Russian army has been grinding away at Ukraine for over three years now, a direct confrontation with the United States is not in Russia's interest.
It's not like Oreshnik is some "impossible to intercept" wunderwaffe either. It's a conventionally armed intermediate range ballistic missile with a very interesting/high volume submunitions payload, the United States was looking at fielding a similar weapon 20 years ago under the conventional prompt strike programme and decided against it. There are two AEGIS ashore sites in Poland and Romania, and Arrow in Germany shortly, that are designed to defend against ballistic missiles like this. If you can hit the missile "before it splits" (from a single MIRV bus/space vehicle, and then into 6 MIRVS, and finally into 36 submunitions) the target set is much smaller. If you can hit the MIRV bus/space vehicle directly the entire weapon/payload can be taken out with a single intercept, that would be it's weakness. Once it starts splitting it's a much more difficult and numerous target. Six Oreshniks "fully split" is 216 submunitions.
I said first strike, to clarify, in the current context if the US does something against the leadership. I don`t believe there is any such thing as showing strength against Russia, directly in this case. What is that B-2 supposed to do, bomb some Russian peasant in Kamchatka? Its pretty much the only real threat, a real bad day for some random bear in Siberia. Posturing like this is meaningless when the first step towards escalation is already a direct war, its why this is not a show of strength at all IMO at least the Russians will never care about it.
Unless we assume the US can get away with fucking the Russian leadership and in response Russia just sits there doing nothing. Its all back to the red lines talk, this is one of them the US can't cross therefore showing strength is pointless, both sides already know each others capabilities.
This meeting keeps getting funnier
Coincidentally there are some military exercises in Alaska set to start this Sunday, but pushing up the arrival of the B-2s in time for tomorrow's meeting is a deliberate choice.