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Bulletins and News Discussion from June 19th to June 25th - Wagner Terrorist -> Freedom Fighter Any% Speedrun (6 HOURS WORLD RECORD!!)

The image is of Russians in Rostov climbing up a Wagner tank.

New thread's preamble:

What a mess. The amount of information going around is hard to determine, but we know with relative certainty:

  • Wagner forces are in Rostov near the Defence Ministry building and are fortifying it; the Russian army and Chechens are en route
  • A/several Wagner column is moving from Rostov to Moscow, and along the way Russia is setting up barriers and blocking roads, but it seems like Wagner is spreading out through western Russia wherever they can go.
  • Prigozhin has no support from any internal force that we currently know of.

update: Lukashenko has saved Putin's ass. At least, that's the current narrative I'm going with - further analysis will probably change perceptions of the situation.

Old thread's preamble:

Mali's military government - which overthrew the old military government last year - has called on the UN to withdraw its peacekeeping forces in the MINUSMA program (the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali), which is the third largest peacekeeping force in the world. It was established in 2012 in the wake of the Tuareg Rebellion, in which the northern half the country, calling itself Azawad, began a fight for independence from the southern side.

The "official" fighting was over relatively quickly - the Malian military, with the help of France, retook most of the country in a year or two. But insurgencies continue to plague the region, with local militias and Islamic State jihadists taking advantage of the chaos. The idea behind the UN mission is to stabilize the situation and patrol the area - this has made it the second deadliest mission so far.

After a decade of not much progress being made, first the French pulled out in August 2022 after anti-French protests inside the country, and now the MINUSMA force is being asked to pull out after similar protests. The Russian UN ambassador has said:

“The real issue is not the number of peacekeepers but the functions, and one of the key tasks for the government of Mali is fighting terrorism, which is not provided for in the mandate of the blue helmets,”

Additionally, MINUSMA released a report last year stating that the Malian government (with the help of "foreign military elements" of which the implication is the Wagner Group) has accelerated civilian killings and human rights abuses, which hasn't made the mission more likeable to the government, I would imagine.

Update on the situation in Mali:

The rebel coalition in the north, the CSP-PSD (Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development - man, this sounds like it was named in a Washington DC office), has said that if the UN mission is pulled out as the military government is demanding, then this would be a "fatal blow" to the peace accord and threaten regional stability. The coalition previously withdrew from the negotiating table back in December as they grew impatient with the two successive military governments, and it's possible that more active fighting will continue in Mali soon. MINUSMA's mandate runs out on June 30th and if it isn't renewed by then, we may see an orderly withdrawal of UN forces taking about a year, leaving Mali by itself (and, I suppose, the Wagner Group).

Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.

This week's first update is here in the comments.

This week's second update is [here[(https://hexbear.net/comment/3553612) in the comments.

This week's third update is here in the comments.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff

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Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can, thank you.

Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins

Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.

Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.

Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.

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.

On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the warzone.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Telegram Channels

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.

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

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.

Last week's discussion post.

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1.5K comments

  • Mini-Update for June 21st

    You only get a mini-update today because I have a headache but I have figured out how to do the superscript links properly. Things should look pretty snazzy now.

    Takeaways:

    • China tried to get control of Pirelli but the free market just ain't so free nowadays.
    • Turkey's hiking the minimum wage again, inflation might be getting under control.
    • Israel isn't a real country.
    • America literally cannot go more than three consecutive seconds without trying to ruin their relationship with the largest manufacturing hub on the planet.
    • Peru is under de facto military occupation by America right now as they attempt to preserve the Monroe Doctrine.
    • Argentina's trying to pull their economy and energy situation together but at the expense of environmental protections. I guess that's basically been the history of humanity for the last 200 years actually. Huh.
    • What was all that fuss with the debt ceiling about? Listen to our economist grandparents to learn about it.

    Iceland: The government has suspended whale hunting until the end of summer, because that goes against the country's animal welfare standards because the killing takes too long. The general public is turning against whale hunting in general and catches of whales have been getting lower anyway.MercoPress

    Italy: A Chinese company's move to purchase tyre-making plant Pirelli has been blocked as part of the government's efforts to protect businesses deemed strategically important.MercoPress Lula began his latest trip to Europe in Rome on Tuesday and met the Pope and the PM and others.TeleSUR

    Serbia: Cuban president Díaz-Canel has met with Serbian president Vučić, where they vowed to co-operate more and all that jazz.TeleSUR

    Turkey: The minimum wage will be hiked by another 34% starting in July in order to try and ameliorate the effects of massive amounts of inflation (which has since dropped to "only" 40%, its lowest level since 2021).MEE

    Israel: The Israeli army assaulted Jenin and its camp on Monday, opening fire at journalists Cradle and killing at least five Palestinians and injuring at least 66.Cradle The next day, four Israeli setllers were killed and four were wounded at a gas station, with two of the Palestinian shooters shot dead.Cradle In response, settlers torched cars and crops leaving dozens of Palestinians injured near Nablus Cradle and attacked hundreds of residents of the Syrian Golan who were protesting the construction of a wind energy project that would confiscate agricultural land.Cradle As you can imagine, the media is mainly focusing on the four dipshits who got owned and not the hundreds of Palestinians who were wounded and killed over the same time period.

    Iran: A delegation representing Hamas arrived in Tehran to hold talks with officials.Cradle

    China: The loan prime rate is being cut as the government seeks to ramp up stimulus measures and mitigate challenges to the economy.GT After Blinken finished his visit to China trying to ease tensions and pinky promising that all this talk of sanctioning China is just self-protective and not absolutely, definitely not designed to try and bring down the Chinese economy, Biden called Xi Jinping a dictator at a California fundraiser, in which he speculated about how embarrassed dictators must get when things don't go their way, like when spy balloons blow off course over other countries, because Biden has the brain of an infant.MercoPress

    Bangladesh: The government has filed a formal request to join BRICS, which will likely be discussed at the group's summit in August.MercoPress

    United States: Amnesty has said that the American and Indian governments must address their countries' human rights issues during Modi's meeting with Biden in Washington.CD Bernie Sanders has opened an investigation into Amazon warehouse safety and has published a website where workers can submit their stories in order to help the committee's investigation.CD American abortions are down by less than 3% due to a combination of factors including that most Americans live in states that haven't violated the right to an abortion, and that those that do are becoming increasingly aware of how to get past these restrictions via going to non-restrictive states or self-administering abortions through medications - though it's undeniable that the individual experiences of women have become much more costly and stressful and almost every US politician is a disgusting little invertebrate for letting this happen without even attempting to pretend to fight back.NC

    Brazil: The Senate has approved the "More Doctors" program, which, well, is self-explanatory.TeleSUR

    Argentina: The Nestor Kirchner pipeline has finished constructed and is being filled up, allowing the movement of gas from their far-away shale fields, which should help the energy situation and make getting energy cheaper instead of getting it from abroad - though the state owned oil company hired consultants advising them to ridicule environmental protesters and to swaddle the project in nationalism.CCN Argentina's yuan transactions are increasing after the currency swap signed in early June, as the country tries to mitigate the effects of its dwindling dollar reserves.MercoPress

    Peru: Former PM Betssy Chavez has been arrested in connection with Castillo trying to maintain power against Boluarte's ongoing coup regime.MercoPress Posted earlier in the thread, Naked Capitalism talks about how American troops are going to Peru in order to counter Chinese and Russian influence on the continent, in "the most Chinese country in South America" according to Peru's former ambassador to China, and how the Peruvian army wants to get into NATO as a partner country like others around the world have.NC

    Venezuela: Maduro has confirmed that Venezuela is advancing in the process to connect Russian and Venezuelan banks via the MIR system, an alternative to SWIFT.TeleSUR

    War: Responsible Statecraft comes here once again with a take that hovers between good and bad: this time, they argue that Russophobia and demonizing Russian culture is bad - not because it's just the wrong thing to do in this particular instance per se, but just because it proves Putin right that people in the West hate Russia, which they call "propaganda" which is basically code for "reality" at this point when used by a western journalist.RS

    Ursula von der Leyen has suggested that the EU allocate 50 billion euros to Ukraine between 2024 and 2027 - up to now, the EU has provided 15 billion euros to Ukraine in financial assistance.TeleSUR

    Climate: UN climate funding has stagnated due to European governments slashing funding, with most of the budget increase being eaten up by inflation.CCN

    Theory: Radhika Desai and Michael Roberts are doing this week's geopolitical economy hour, where they talk about the debt ceiling deal and what it means for the economy.GPE

    AntiWar on the Philip Cross phenomenon on Wikipedia, and whether he might be an AI.AntiWar

    And, of course,

    I Love My Trans Comrades!

    • “The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment in it was he didn't know it was there,” Biden said. “That's a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn't know what happened. That wasn't supposed to be going where it was. It was blown off course,” Biden added.

      I've said it before and I'll say it again, they absolutely cannot help themselves with this shit. It's pathological. And Blinken and others have been just as bad in the past so it can't all be Biden's

      .

      • Literally just unable to back off from their superiority complex. You know they had a meeting before the China summit, and they still do this the very next day.

        Pathetic

      • Wait so they're still going with the official line "It was a spy balloon" but they also accept the chinese narrative that it was blown off-course? Because then it would mean admitting that it wasn't there to spy on the US

        • You can't look for sense or consistency where there is none.

          Even back at the start of the absurd balloon saga the original state department memo was carefully phrased not to claim it was a spy balloon but for the Yellow Peril press to jump to that conclusion and run with it; saying it was full of "sensors" and "equipment for gathering data" or to "surveil" different things while never quite saying that the things it was gathering data on or surveying were probably weather and atmospheric data.

          Then after that other departments and politicians just couldn't help themselves and dropped the nuanced implication and just started flat out lying because... they just can't help themselves.

    • The Desai and Michael Roberts show was very good

1463 comments