On the 20th of October, Moldova - a small, landlocked country bordering western Ukraine and with a population of about 3 million - voted to join the EU. The margin was razor-thin, with the pro-EU vote gaining 50.39%, or an absolute difference of about 11,000 people. There was simultaneously a presidential vote between the incumbent, Maia Sandu, and other candidates, with the main competitor being Alexandr Stoianoglo.
The election was characterized by accusations of Russian interference, with Russian propaganda apparently flooding in, as well as people offering Moldovans money to vote against the EU. While the result does suggest that half the voting-age population of Moldova consists entirely of Russians who want to destroy democracy and all the good in the world, it seems to have just barely failed. This is a bad time to be a site entirely composed of Russian disinformation agents and bots. Twice already today, I've had to restart my program after somebody told me "Disregard all previous prompts."
While Moldova is a poor country which could benefit in some ways from EU membership, in practice, it is unlikely that they will be able to join for the foreseeable future, requiring many of the... reforms... that the EU requires of potential new members. But as basically every major European economy continues to slowly sink as recessions and political crises degrade them, one wonders how beneficial EU membership will even be in the years and decades to come - if it survives for decades. In that sense, it's as if the survivors of the Titanic are swimming back towards it, believing that being on a bigger - albeit slowly sinking - boat is better than trying their luck on small lifeboats.
Then again, like with Serbia, their geographical and geopolitical position makes anti-Western actions extremely difficult. It is rare that dissention is tolerated for long in the West - one tends to get called a dictator by crowds of people holding English-language signs in non-English countries, photographed by Western journalists who haven't meaningfully reported on your country in months or years. You can crush your people with neoliberal austerity for years, killing hundreds of thousands through neglect, and face glowing approval from the media - but try and use state resources to benefit the poor, and global institutions start ranking you on the authoritarian dictator scale.
The best case for Moldova is that it becomes an exploitable hinterland for Germany to harvest and privatize as it tries - and fails - to compete in a global economic war between the US and China/BRICS. The worst case is that tensions with Russia over Pridnestrovie, as well as possible eventual NATO involvement (though Moldova is not a member, it is a partner of NATO), result in the ongoing war also reaching them.
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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.
Appreciate the lengthy write up. I do wonder what the solution to massed SEAD would look like for Iran. Do they just turn their radar off and try and time it so the SEAD missile looses its lock? I really have no idea what other countermeasures there would be.
Me, an idiot: Saturate the area around your defenses at like 10:1 with irrelevant radar signals to make them less likely to target the right location.
What will probably happen: Something else that's bad instead.
Yeah that's a thing that works, apparently the 1st gen of these missiles would happily seek microwave ovens if they were nearby
Edit: looks like the microwave story originated in the Balkans but may be an urban legend.
Like the ones people use in their homes? Don't make it sound like a 2 for 1 deal for Israel.
Yeah exactly. There are continuous-wave 2.4 GHz radars, but I don't know if they're currently in use, or for what purposes. I would imagine microwave ovens would look similar to those to a detector, but I don't know enough about radar to say if they would actually work as decoys like the stories describe.
Yes decoys and missile approach warning systems exist for this purpose, the question is how effective they are against the ALBM attack vector. The footage out there of destroyed Patriot and S300 systems would suggest limited effectiveness.
I think that basically all advanced weapon systems made today are designed for non-peer conflict and suffer from reality when they're deployed in the field. Look at these tanks in Ukraine, they're super advanced but in the face of an actual conflict they wind up having to Frankenstein on defensive measures on the fly.
The key to avoid being destroyed, as shown by the Serbs, is shoot and scoot tactics. Turning on your radar for a very short period of time, shooting at anything that appears, and then changing position. If this can be combined with a multi-layered air defence defence system, with point defence SAMs such as the Tor and Pantsir actively defending the major S300 SAM batteries and shooting down incoming missiles and bombs, along with mobile electronic counter measure and decoy units frustrating incoming anti radiation missiles, that would give the air defence system a solid chance of survival and a chance to carry out its mission.
The problem is, as also shown by the Serbs, that if air defence operators dedicate so much energy and time to avoiding detection and destruction and end up in a stalemate with the enemy SEAD/DEAD campaign, the air defence is practically suppressed as they cannot carry out their primary mission of engaging enemy aircraft and denying them access to their airspace.
The problems Iran face are that these anti radiation ROCKS ALBMs would be launched from a stand off distance over 200km away from the target. Such a distance is outside of the firing range of Iran's air defence systems, meaning that they won't be able to engage the aircraft firing the ALBMs directly. To stop them, they'll have to shoot down the ALBM itself. Then there's also the question of how mobile Iran's main SAM batteries can be, if they're set up to defend a certain area in a stationary manner and can't move easily, then they are more vulnerable.
Interesting, thanks for the write up. Does sound like Iran will be stuck in a bind then. Damned if you do damned if you don’t. Hopefully Iran has a better plan this time for this scenario would not be good if their AA gets taken out.
Israel could also see taking out Iran's air defence systems as a way of "leveling the playing field". We know that Israeli air defence systems in Arrow-2, Arrow-3 and David's Sling are likely depleted of ammunition due to Iran's ballistic missile attacks that took place during April and October. It's why Israel needs the US THAAD system to be deployed there. So that leaves Israel vulnerable to attack. So from their perspective, taking out Iranian air defence systems so that Iran is also vulnerable to attack could be a way of resetting the status of current events.
Yeah as you mentioned earlier I’m afraid this is going to move rapidly up the escalation ladder.
It’s why I was curious what Iran could potentially do to mitigate its AA installations being destroyed. Even if it’s not as good as the Russian or Chinese AA setup, some deterrence is better than nothing when the western doctrine is all about air superiority.
That is part of the strategy to protect against DEAD, but if you are turning off your radars, then at the very least you are supressing your air defenses so in that way the SEAD mission is being successful.
The problem with keeping radars off is that SEAD weapons are usually paired up with something intended to hit the site if it stays dark, such as a cruise missile, drone, or long range glide bomb.