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.
AMK Mapping reports that the Ukrainians have launched a successful counterattack against the Russian breakthrough at the new Donetsk defensive line, and stemmed the Russian advance, along with retaking territory, at least for now. This involved a large amount of Ukrainian reinforcements.
The Russian advance in this area was an infantry only assault heavily supported by Russian airstrikes beforehand and close air support, which is quite rare for Russia. If they attempted to reinforce this advance with mechanised elements, it's unknown at this time.
What really saved Ukraine here is the fact that Russia's FAB glide bombs can only hit static targets, can't readjust their flight path mid flight, lack dedicated precision guidance seperate from GNSS (satellite navigation), and the targeting pods for their strike aircraft like the Su-34 are not high fidelity enough to track targets at stand off distance. If Russia had targeting pods with the fidelity of something like the Sniper XR, and if Russia had glide bombs in the class of the GBU-39 Laser SDB, GBU-53 SDB II, or SPICE 250/1000/2000, they could have picked off Ukrainian formations on the move that came to support the counter attacks, and provided much more effective close air support for Russian infantry behind Ukrainian lines. The only weapon Russia has in this class for their strike aircraft is the Kh-38ML, a missile.
An Su-34 equipped with high fidelity targeting pods, 3 external fuel tanks for increased loitering time, and over a dozen FAB-250 glide bombs with laser or TV guidance would have been able to provide very effective close air support, but that capability does not exist currently.
Damn so those are the hardened western trained neo-Nazi units they sent in blunting the Russian advance? Still very unfortunate Russia isn't expending extraordinary efforts to exterminate those as otherwise they're very likely to survive the war and I know people here like to circlejerk about blowback but I think honestly it's unlikely in any meaningful quantity and most of them will go on to be high end mercenaries used by the US/NATO to destabilize the multipolar world order.
If Russia is serious about denazification (and I don't trust Putin at all as latest word from RT is Russia offered concessions to Trump on the territories it legally claims and may accept only Crimea + Donbass and Lugansk and possibly only parts of those though I have to hope that's just a stalling tactic I also have to question doing it at this point as it will sap morale for Russian soldiers in these others reasons questioning why they're dying for something they're not keeping and will give back to the enemy) they need to put in the effort and resources.
I don't know if they've deployed the TV guided KABs before but that's probably an option in these situations. Maybe the higher cost and lower stockpiles makes them hesitant to deploy them in large numbers?
It's mainly a problem of range. The maximum range of the TV, laser, and GNSSS guided KAB 500s is between 15-40km, depending on variant. Not long enough range to keep the Su-34 out of the range of air defence. These bombs could be made into glide bombs with large winglets to get the range required, but then the problem becomes the kill chain. The targeting pods on the aircraft likely don't have the fidelity to illuminate the target at longer ranges for laser guided munitions, or maintain a datalink over the required distance for TV guided munitions. One solution could be to use a drone or forward observers behind Ukrainian lines to illuminate the target for laser guided munitions. I think Russia has done such with the Kh-38ML in the past.