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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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.
Does anyone have sources on how much US/UK involvement is required to launch these missiles? It is guaranteed that they provide intel and potential targets. From there, does Ukraine program the missiles? According to Wikipedia, it seems the Storm Shadow missiles are guided by GPS, which—despite its ubiquity—is US military tech. It also appears the missiles need to be loaded with satellite images for target matching. Apparently, they can relay images of a site just before impact and presumably that won't be going directly to Ukrainian military staff but more likely somewhere in the US/UK?
I was almost impressed for a second by some of the tech, but then I remembered that Russia has missiles flying at up to 3 km/s, and now I’m not as much.
Storm Shadow/SCALP is a terrain following, low flying stealth cruise missile. The flight path needs to be programmed beforehand, and that is done using satellite and topographical data from the US/NATO, and US/NATO officials also program the flight path before the missile is fired, to avoid air defence locations (also obtained by US/NATO satellite data). Satellite imagery for target matching with the missile's EO sensors would also require US/NATO involvement. Storm Shadow is a fire and forget platform, once it's fired it can't be reprogrammed, it flies according to the set flight path.
Ukraine:
Maybe selects the target to strike, using information gathered by NATO ISTAR capabilities (Information, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance).
Loads the missile onto their Su-24 bomber aircraft(s), modified with parts and likely avionics from the British Tornado GR4 aircraft, so it can carry and fire the Storm Shadow/SCALP missile.
Flies in their Su-24 bombers to the launch point with escort aircraft (previously MiG 29 aircraft with US made anti radiation missiles to suppress air defence systems on the path to the launch point, and Su-27 aircraft with air to air missiles. F-16s might also play a role now).
Gets to the launch point, performs launching maneuveres, and launches the missile.
USA/UK/France/NATO:
Provides Ukraine with a list of possible targets using their ISTAR capabilities, if not selecting a target itself.
Programmes the missile's flight path, from launch point to target area, to fly low to the ground and avoid air defence coverage, using their own topographical data of Russia, and the location of air defence systems and radars, gathered by NATO satellites, in particular US satellites will be used for this data as they have the most capability in this regard.
Provide satellite imagery for the terrain matching and target matching features of the missile for the terminal flight stage.
The missile uses GPS guidance provided by satellites for guidance throughout it's flight.
I'm sure you can see why Russia is not happy with the above.
Thank you, that's exactly the kind of detail I was looking for.
If you are interested in further investigating this, look up the leaked Taurus phone call from Germany. They admit that British personnel program the missiles, and even help the Ukrainians load them onto their aircraft. I've posted a comment about it also in this thread.