Image is of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline, which transports gas from Russia to China. This isn’t an oil pipeline (such as the ESPO) but I thought it looked cool. Source here.

Trump has recently proposed a 500% tariff on goods from countries that trade with Russia, including India and China (who buy ~70% of Russia’s oil output), as well as a 10% additional tariff on goods from countries that “align themselves with BRICS.” Considering that China is the largest trading partner of most of the countries on the planet at this point, and India and Brazil are reasonably strong regional players, I’m not sure what exactly “alignment” means, but it could be pretty bad.

Sanctions and tariffs on Russian products have been difficult to achieve in practice. It’s easy to write an order to sanction Russia, but much harder to actually enforce these sorts of things because of, for example, the Russian shadow oil fleet, or countries like Kazakhstan acting as covert middlemen (well, as covert as a very sudden oil export boom can be).

Considering that China was pretty soundly victorious last time around, I’m cautiously optimistic, especially because China and India just outright cutting off their supply of energy and fuel would be catastrophic to them (and if Iran and Israel go to war again any time in the near future, it’ll only be more disastrous). Barring China and India kowtowing to Trump and copying Europe vis-a-vis Nordstream 2 (which isn’t impossible, I suppose), the question is whether China and India will appear to accede to these commands while secretly continuing trade with Russia through middlemen, or if they will be more defiant in the face of American pressure.

Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    45·
    2 days ago

    Trump to announce “aggressive” Ukraine weapons plan tomorrow - Axios

    Key takeaway:

    Two sources told Axios they had reason to believe the plan was likely to include long-range missiles that could reach targets deep inside Russian territory, including Moscow. However, neither was aware of any final decision.

    Trump told reporters Sunday evening that the weapons he would send Ukraine through European countries would include "various pieces of very sophisticated military (equipment)… Video here

    Missiles with the range to hit Moscow from Ukraine means missiles with more than 500km range. That excludes a lot of weapons if this happens. The four potential missiles in the US arsenal are:

    • Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM). Subsonic low altitude surface to surface cruise missile. Range 1300-2500km, depending on variant.
    • Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), surface to air and surface to surface supersonic missile. Range of 500km possible in a surface to surface role.
    • AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range (JASSM-ER), Stealthy high altitude air to surface cruise missile. Range of around 1000km.
    • Precision Strike Missile (PrSM). Surface to surface ballistic missile. Range of over 500km.

    If this goes ahead and if it refers to US made weapons (I have significant doubts), a possibility is Typhon launchers with TLAM and SM-6 missiles, which are set to be deployed to Germany next year. The first TLAMs were used over three decades ago during the Gulf War, not exactly new technology. SM-6 missiles would also give Ukrainian air defence the capability to engage Russian aircraft at much longer ranges then they currently can, (SM-6 max range is 370km in a surface to air role), and an ability to engage time sensitive targets in the ground at long range due to the high speed of the missile (3.5 Mach). The Typhon launcher can launch both of these. TLAMs can also be launched from the “ROGUE-Fires”, a 4 wheeled unmanned ground vehicle capable of launching a single TLAM.

    If JASSM is included, it would be quite concerning as it’s a stealth cruise missile that can fly at high altitude, the only known missile with this capability. (most stealthy cruise missiles use a combination of low altitude and stealth to radar and IR sensors). Russian and Syrian air defences (using Russian equipment) failed to shoot down a single JASSM stealth cruise missile during US attacks on Syria. PrSM could also be concerning given the range and ballistic vector. Again, I have significant doubts, but unlike the SM-6 and TLAM, Ukraine already has the equipment needed to launch these missiles, F-16 fighter aircraft and M142 HIMARS trucks.

    More likely I can see other weapons which have already been delivered, like ATACMS ballistic missiles and Storm Shadow subsonic stealth low altitude cruise missiles, being delivered again.

    However, no one should be surprised if we see TLAMs and JASSMs flying into Russian military bases in the coming weeks. This is very much a possibility.

      • darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        18·
        2 days ago

        They burned through stocks of the fodder weapons slated for decommissioning anyways and are now onto things that are still useful but superseded by even better and newer models and thus by using them they create demand for more production capacity and room in armories for these newer weapons which they wish to stockpile and have massive production of for their coming war with China.

        More importantly they may have gathered all the data they can on Russian defenses from older weapons and want to see if newer weapons being used gets them other data or forces fielding of newer units by Russia which can be studied.