back in my map era, we're ukrainemaxxing right now
Declarations of the imminent doom of Ukraine are a news megathread specialty, and this is not what I am doing here - mostly because I'm convinced that whenever we do so, the war extends another three months to spite us. Ukraine has been in an essentially apocalyptic crisis for over a year now after the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive, unable to make any substantial progress and resigned to merely being a persistent nuisance (and arms market!) as NATO fights to the last Ukrainian. In this context, predicting a terminal point is difficult, as things seem to always be going so badly that it's hard to understand how and why they fight on. In every way, Ukraine is a truly shattered country, barely held together by the sheer combined force of Western hegemony. And that hegemony is weakening.
I therefore won't be giving any predictions of a timeframe for a Ukrainian defeat, but the coming presidency of Trump is a big question mark for the conflict. Trump has talked about how he wishes for the war to end and for a deal to be made with Putin, but Trump also tends to change his mind on an issue at least three or four times before actually making a decision, simply adopting the position of who talked to him last. And, of course, his ability to end the war might be curtailed by a military-industrial complex (and various intelligence agencies) that want to keep the money flowing.
The alignment of the US election with the accelerating rate of Russian gains is pretty interesting, with talk of both escalation and de-escalation coinciding - the former from Biden, and the latter from Trump. Russia very recently performed perhaps the single largest aerial attack of Ukraine of the entire war, striking targets across the whole country with missiles and drones from various platforms. In response, the US is talking about allowing Ukraine to hit long-range targets in Russia (but the strategic value of this, at this point, seems pretty minimal).
Additionally, Russia has made genuine progress in terms of land acquisition. We aren't talking about endless and meaningless battles over empty fields anymore. Some of the big Ukrainian strongholds that we've been spending the last couple years speculating over - Chasiv Yar, Kupiansk, Orikhiv - are now being approached and entered by Russian forces. The map is actually changing now, though it's hard to tell as Ukraine is so goddamn big.
Attrition has finally paid off for Russia. An entire generation of Ukrainians has been fed into the meat grinder. Recovery will take, at minimum, decades - more realistically, the country might be permanently ruined, until that global communist revolution comes around at least. And they could have just made a fucking deal a month into the war.
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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.
How does the Mongolian precedent reflect on the Netanyahu warrants? Are we more or less likely to see action if Netanyahu travels abroad compared to Putin?
political power flows from the barrel of a gun
I’m just hearing this now for the first time
God I hate that emoji
Putin could do that because he could be evacuated by force if necessary, since Mongolia is a weak, non-nuclear country that neighbors Russia. He couldn't go to South Africa (I guess) because there was no good contingency plan.
Netanyahu would have no solid guarantee of escape from most countries, unless the US provides it by threatening to attack the arresting country (we'll see).
Also, mongolia likes russia historically, due to stuff with revolution and ww2, (and being landocked between them and china)
Historic ties can be swept away quickly if a color revolution replaces the gov. But point taken
Pretty sure there was already a Color Revolution in 1992, but the sucessors of the Communist Party (Socdems) won like 2/3 or most of the congress in the last election.
Yeah Mongolia is in a weird place now, they had a resurgence of nationalism after 92 but they're also cool with Russia, who was making them not be nationalist during the Soviet era. I'm sure some of it is realpolitik but the USSR was enough of a net positive for Mongolia that it seems like there isn't much bad blood.
even with no precedent, it's clear the Vienna convention entitles heads of state to diplomatic immunity when they travel abroad. there is no legal mechanism that resolves the contradiction between the Vienna convention and the ICC.
Whichever side that favors the Rules Based Order^TM^ at the time will be the one that is applied. This can be flip-flopped as needed. International law is a joke
So then there’s no point to these warrants or the court in general?
It stops people from travelling to certain countries, essentially. Canada and the EU have already said they'll arrest Netanyahu if he comes to them. Putin decided against traveling to South Africa last year to avoid putting them under pressure as well, although I think they said they wouldn't arrest him.
If nothing else, this drives a wedge between the US and Europe, which is probably a good thing for everyone but the US.
But only stops them through civility, not enforceable terms unless someone thinks they can beat the conference of Vienna?
Realistically, Canada will tell Netanyahu he's not welcome. the Vienna convention allows you to declare specific diplomats as personas non-grata, including before their arrival, and then they must leave in a reasonable amount of time or loose their immunity. I still think at that point, they would only be allowed to hold Netanyahu for deportation, they couldn't arrest him for genocide.
What I’m learning is that international law is wack
Wiggity wack, even
The only point is 1) legalistic pressure in the form of sanctions and 2) further disillusionment and unraveling of the “international rules based order”
Diplomatic immunity is a good precedent. no matter how bad genocide is, kidnapping a foreign head of state will always be an act of war.
What’s the difference between kidnapping and arresting? Legality?
arresting people have valid warrants. Netanyahu is presumed to have diplomatic immunity, so his arrest warrant isn't valid in at least 193 countries. Any country he travels to is implied to be offering him safe conduct by their ratifying the VCDR, unless the explicitly say he's not welcome.
Get him out into international waters.
They seem to have bound themselves by saying stuff. I don’t think they would stop the plane though