Links and Stuff
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, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
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.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Yesterday's discussion post.
Responding to the vid from the Austrian military someone posted in the last thread:
The comparisons to the battle of Kursk are at least somewhat apt, especially in regards to defense in depth.
Ukraine's defense in depth is something that I don't see a lot of people talking about but is really important. If you look at DPA's Russo-Ukraine war map, he recently added markers for a lot of the prewar Ukrainian entrenchments he could find. There's a hell of a lot of them, and they can be found as far back as ~20-30 km from the frontline. They're also built very close to one another, meaning that every fortified position probably has at least 3 others near, sometimes even up to 5 or 6, that can all provide supporting fire if they come under attack.
This is the same kind of defensive strategy that the Soviets used in the battle of Kursk in 1943 that helped them halt the German offensive. Whether the Ukrainians can pull of the same thing obviously remains to be seen, but as the Austrians pointed out, they do seem to have some of the same main strengths the Soviets had in 1943. However, Ukraine's situation in regards to supplies and strategic reserves could be one of their main weaknesses that the Soviets did not face in 1943.
Ukraine's supply situation is obviously not great. Idk exactly how bad it is, but the fact that the Russians have recently put a lot of effort into crippling Ukraine's rail network means that Ukraine is really going to struggle getting supplies to troops in Donbass. Armies obviously can't fight if the run out of supplies to fight with, so the tenacity of Ukrainian resistance will mean very little if they start running out of food & ammo.
The other thing to consider is whether Ukraine has any strategic reserves that they can deploy to use to blunt Russian breakthroughs, or to launch counterattacks with. IIRC, in the battle of Kursk, the northern pincer of the German offensive was ground down and halted by Soviet defense in depth, but the southern pincer actually almost broke through. What saved the Soviets was that they kept the 5th Guards tank army in reserve for just such a situation, and launched it into a counterattack against the German's southern pincer, resulting in the infamous tank battle at Prokhorovka and the end of the German's entire Kursk offensive. If Ukraine lacks a force like this, then they're basically stuck relying almost entirely on static defensive positions to save them, and if that strategy fails, a Russian breakthrough in Ukrainian defenses means that the Russian forces will be able to conduct large scale maneuvers behind Ukrainian lines essentially unopposed, which will result in a complete and rapid collapse of the entire Ukrainian army in Donbass.