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.
Large scale Ukrainian drone attack against Russia is currently underway, over 40 drones reported to be shot down. Over 30 were over Bryansk, the oblast that Ukraine used ATACMS against last night/early morning. So far only Ukrainian UAVs. If Ukraine launches ATACMS as part of these attacks, it could get bad, but I don’t think the Ukrainians are that suicidal…
Twitter Source and the same source on xcancel.
This is the same source that correctly reported on Russia’s attack on Ukrainian electrical infrastructure as it it happened a few days ago.
Luke Skywalker would NEVER surrender to Russia.
I forgot I was on Hexbear for a moment and was very confused as to why I was reading a reasonable breakdown of the situation in Ukraine.
There was some news a couple of days ago of China issuing 2 billion in USD denominated sovereign bonds that surprisingly was treated negatively or as some capitulation to the USD. I feel like this is quite different
I see this as creating a small triangular financing mechanism to help offload from the USD collectively with the central fulcrum being a facilitation of $ for ¥ swaps. The end result is global south nations pay down USD denominated liabilities & export resources to China earning RMB.
Simply put Gulf (and others) countries have too many dollars, China sells them these bonds, China uses these dollars to fund poor countries (investments, imports whatever), Poor countries use dollars to pay debt, Poor countries and gulf countries sell their natural resources to China in yuan then China sells its technology to these countries in yuan. Saudi flushes out $, China gains real resources, poor countries less poor, net negative for the volume of $ being outside of US borders. Meanwhile Chinese sovereign bond buyers are also using these bonds as collateral for Chinese tech & infrastructure projects in Saudi Arabia and their respective home countries. For China it also represents a very slow conversion of excess USD and their own trade surpluses into physical commodities while creating demand for their own currency. These commodities will continue to rise in USD prices while falling in RMB prices. They will have to repay these bonds upon maturity eventualy but it will be with cheaper dollars as commodities reprice higher in tighter supply-constrained markets. So even in the long term there is another net loss of USD.
Another angle is that many coutries are facing double digit borrowing costs in USDs to rollover or service USD debts. China can stabilise these at rates almost identical to US Treasury rates , these bonds were issued at just 1 base point over UST! after all. Another net negative effect on dollar circulation and accumulation. It basicaly tries to flip the Dollar Milkshake Theory to its head. Could China have liquidated and used its UST reserves instead of this? Sure. But China actually values stability even for the hostile hegemon, so its maintaining/reducing its UST reserves slowly, whereas the needs of Global South for USD liquidity are becoming critical. This bridges that gap
Seeing rumors that, in the wake of Dr. Oz being appointed to run CMS, Maury Povich will be appointed to run the Administration for Children and Families.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-picks-dr-oz-serve-cms-administrator-2024-11-19/
Dr. Oz to ru(I)n Medicare and Medicaid
The claimed number of North Koreans is now at six figures and rising.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/18/world/hong-kong-democracy-leaders-sentencing-intl-hnk/index.html
Joshua Wong shouts ‘I love Hong Kong’ as more than 40 leading democracy leaders handed lengthy prison terms in mass trial
Hong Kong CNN — More than 40 of Hong Kong’s best known pro-democracy figures have been sentenced to prison terms of up to 10 years on subversion charges, in the biggest single blow to the city’s already shrinking political freedoms following Beijing’s sweeping crackdown on dissent.
Most only got several years. One guy got ten for being a central organizer.
Individual Jan 6 rioters got 20 years just for hitting a cop.
Spain sentenced Catalans to up to 40 years for doing exactly what Tai did (minus the violent rioting.)
One retaliation theory is that russias stance is anyone in a “coalition” against them is equally guilty of striking them, thus any member of nato or other US ally supporting Ukraine is a plausible target for retaliation.
Undersea cables between Finland and Germany for example.
Some World Cup qualifying news from the best continent, Asia. Japan continue their rampage as they beat China today, while Saudi Arabia continue their woeful form with a loss against Indonesia. Iraq beat Oman away, big result for Iraq. Iraq’s chances for a first World Cup since 1986 look very good after Jordan’s fumble vs Kuwait. Uzbekistan look set for their first World Cup appearence after beating Based Korea today, while Bad Korea drew against Palestine. My projection of qualified teams after this round is: Iran, Uzbekistan, South Korea, Iraq, Japan, Australia. Saudi Arabia should make it through the playoffs, but they look like shit. UAE have picked some nice form recently, so I think they will be the last team to make it from Asia.
Zionazi Alexandra Szustakiewicz, 64, has been arrested and charged with two counts of hate crime for attacking a couple wearing a Palestine hoodie near Chicago.
