Very slight change of plans: I'll begin the updates next Monday instead of this Friday. So this week will have no updates. Dang. So y'all better post hard enough to make up for it. But not so hard that we get past 1000 comments by the end of the week.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists, for the “buh Zeleski is a jew?!?!” people.
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.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
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 ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ ASB Military News, banned from Twitter.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster - crowd-funded U.S journalist, mostly pro-Russian, works on the ground near warzones to report news and talk to locals.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it's a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
With the entire western media sphere being overwhelming pro-Ukraine already, you shouldn't really need more, but:
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.
A lot of super concerning talk about dirty bombs right now. Russia claiming Ukraine has 2 dirty bomb plans in the final stages, this shit will be instantly blamed on Russia despite any evidence against it.
isn't a dirty bomb almost entirely theoretical? at least it was when they were alleging al-qaeda was gonna use one
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So, it's like the US leaving depleted uranium all over Iraq?
much worse. Du is mostly toxic because of chemichal efects sort of like lead or arsenic but it is no that radioactive. Depending on the makeup of the bomb it could me much more radioactive. To the point that it could poison the earth for hundreths of years is they use cesium. And as chemichally toxic.
Essentially.
Or Guam, Guam has that too
yeah I don't doubt it's cheap but it's not really anymore effective (theoretically) than a regular bomb so I guess given the choice between that and a regular one, the regular one at a busy location is just as effective and easier to evade authorities during transport.
It's effective as a scorched earth strategy and for political shock value and escalatory potential. In purely military terms I doubt it has much use.
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The concept is pretty simple, you just collect your uranium from your nuclear power plants (and Ukraine has a few), put a bunch of explosives together with it, and blow it up. Basically any country that has nuclear power plants could make one if they so desired.
My guess as to why this hasn't happened before is that a) not every country has nuclear power plants, particularly underdeveloped ones; b) many terrorist groups have some connection to intelligence agencies, and even the really cynical ones like the CIA that want to generate terrorism to guarantee they have jobs and can put fear into the population probably don't wanna deal with radioactive fallout; and c) it's gotta be pretty difficult to get radioactive materials into countries, because these things are quite tightly controlled especially across borders, and getting enough explosives together for a big enough bomb would also be tricky.
My own reasoning has always included as well that d) it's a fucking waste of radioactive materials and wouldn't do much. It does seem like the perfect shitty idea some fucked up psycho would come up with in DC though, particularly as a weird way to shout "nuclear threat" against Russia without actually detonating a nuke, which stills frightens the shit out of everyone.
tbh option C is the likely reason just because it's the simplest. also radioactive materials are likely reasonably tightly controlled (at least more so than explosive precursors) so the source may/would be quickly found out so an entire supply chain might get outed.
I don't think one has ever been used but the concept seems simple enough to make if you have radioactive material and a conventional explosive
Slight aside, but I remember reading comments on Reddit by the guy that built OPEN-RISOP (who was a US nuclear planner) about his rationale for targeting nuclear waste storage locations in his hypothetical attack plan on the US:
:yea:
On that topic, this article about the Sellafield storage site in the UK is pretty insane - they're storing radioactive materials in quickly degrading plastic bottles over there.
Thanks for sharing, fascinating (and horrifying) article!
Sounds like the UK in general. :picard-troll:
It’s fascinating to think about what elements of western infrastructure will be our equivalents of Azovstal - vitally important, unique remnants of a more powerful time. They still just about sustain the economies of countries they are in, yet are utterly impossible in build in the modern world. Nay, they’re impossible to even imagine being built in the modern world.
It is a thing which can be done, but a thing which has never been done in practice. In 2022, China and Russia have demonstrated hypersonic ICBM capability, but we are meant to believe the world will be ended by some nuclear waste in a suitcase.
That US once accidentally dropped some nukes on Spain and one of them blew up on a beach (only the conventional explosives detonated), so that's a little like a dirty bomb.
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As opposed to the utterly unhinged Nazis in charge of Russia?
Well, it is something straight out of the Russia playbook. Not to mention how absurd all the evidence presented is. Here is the thing - it is something not even meant for the West it's meant for internal propaganda, or at most a justification for escalation.