Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
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.
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.
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 all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
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/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.
news mega wisdom from our largest adult son in the 25 august vlog
No blowback is actually blowback. Even if the results are unintended, they are always then turned into opportunities because of the commanding position, because of the ability to act that is monopolized by the United States at the global level. That means every situation can be turned to [its] best interests.
Which is one of the reasons that people who reason backwards about every social revolt in the world as having to be an American op because as it unfolds the United States ends up benefiting from it- is ridiculous, is childlike thinking.
America dominates because any spontaneous and sincere social resistance is going to be unorganized and probably defeated, but the pressure on the state that it creates will persist and can be exploited by the one power that can act: the United States.
Sometimes the United States orchestrates things, when it has to. But for the most part it doesn't have to. That's one of those things that super-blackpilled conspiracy people who think they're telling you deep, hard truths- are actually being incredibly naive. Because they assume that the United States has to have that level of conspiratorial interference going on in order to benefit from everything. Not that its role as imperial hegemon makes that the default state everywhere.
I think the cia probably has fingers in more pies than he gives it credit for, but the ability to maneuver in response to organic social unrest around the world is an important piece of maintaining atlantic imperialism that I don't see people talk about very much
I think the U.S. just floods individuals in a country with money and then just sits back and sees what happens. It's not that their fingers aren't in every pie, it's that for the most part, it's 'set it and forget it'.
Like, 500,000 dollars goes incredibly far in Uzbekistan, but is absolutely nothing in the large-scale to the American empire. What we saw happen in Afghanistan is probably just 'business' as usual, it's just that the opponents aren't as completely dug in.
Good point. The blowback is only bad for the normal people who get destroyed by it.
Actually, come to think of it, I was making a similar point all the way back to 9/11. The US Government didn't have to plan 9/11. Everyone in power with two brain cells knew something like that would happen eventually, and when it did they had USAPATRIOT ready to go before Congress for a vote the same day. You don't need to orchestrate a conspiracy when you can just predict the tides.
The western intelligence morass does have assets and eyes everywhere. But that doesn't mean they're the guiding hand behind events. Go read up on some of the prominent CIA ops that have come to light. A lot of it is absurd keystone kops shit, just incompetent idiots blundering around in the dark. There are probably some hyper-competent Jason Bourne guys in western intelligence, but a lot of their successes are down to having massive resources and, as Matt says, the freedom to act anywhere on short notice. A big advantage of all that surveillance and spying is that when something does happen they know about it and can do something about it. Remember; Most CIA spooks aren't paramilitary death squads. they're dorks who can speak Russian and Arabic sitting in cubes reading news posts and blogs to try to figure out what's happening on the ground.