Bulletins and News Discussion from May 6th to May 12th, 2024 - The Nagorno-Karabakh Nosedive - COTW: Armenia
Image is of Stepanakert, essentially the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. It is now a ghost city, and Azerbaijan has recently torn down the parliament building and various other important places. Sourced from this article.
A quick look at Armenia's geographical position reveals the folly of trying to create some kind of Western outpost. With a hostile Azerbaijan to their east, a very unfriendly (albeit NATO member) Turkiye to their west, an ascendant Iran to their south, and Russia not far from the action, there is little hope of doing much more than causing a little chaos in the hopes it'll momentarily distract Russia while it makes inroads most everywhere else on the planet. The political situation appears miserable for Pashinyan, but there isn't really a popular alternative to take the reins. A truly cursed situation.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Armenia! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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.
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.
Continuation of student protests in The Netherlands:
Amsterdam: Hundreds of Amsterdam students, staff and concerned citizens occupied a university (UVA) building on Tuesday afternoon. Representatives had a conversation with the UVA board on Wednesday with no results. UVA has said that they would meet one of the demands by publishing a list of Israeli institutions they work with, they are legally required to do this and still haven’t. Demands of breaking all ties with Israel and allowing peaceful protest on campus were ignored. Instead the board decided to order the police to remove the protesters from the building. Around 5pm riot police violently infiltrated the building. Some protesters threw rocks at the police and there is a video of a protester spraying the police with fire extinguisher. A few protesters ended up with very serious injuries because of the police beatings.
In The Netherlands it’s common for public transport busses to be used at illegal protests to remove the protesters. While one group of protesters was still occupying the building, another group of protesters went elsewhere to the city for the support protest (support protests consists of those protesters who do not want to risk violent altercations with the police). The support protesters saw empty busses that were probably going to be used to arrest the occupant protesters. So they blocked these busses from getting to the occupied building. With no means to arrest hundreds of people, the riot police at the occupied building decided to only arrest a few protesters while letting the rest run away from their beatings.
The situation in the city was very chaotic that evening, with protest groups emerging and fleeing whenever the police would show up. During the night the protests stopped because the police destroyed all encampments.
Utrecht: Following Amsterdam’s example, Utrecht University students and staff organised a protest on Wednesday against the police violence from the previous day. In the evening they managed to occupy a university building and set up another encampment. The president of the university visited the encampment two times to tell the protesters to leave the building, but refused to talk about the demands of the demonstrators. At 1am the police was instructed to remove the protesters. Riot police entered the building and began violently rounding up the protesters. They used pepper spray on non-violent protesters and caused many injuries. There are reports that there were some undercover police at the encampment as well.
Utrecht University is closing all buildings for the rest of the week to prevent other buildings from getting occupied by protesters.
You can follow the Amsterdam and Utrecht encampments on instagram: @amsterdam.encampment @encampment.uu
The Utrecht encampment also has twitter/X account: @UU_encampment
This seems to make tactical sense. The police are heavily armed and armored and have the means to win a pitched battle on a fixed battleground.
Protestors have the advantage of numbers and the ability to disperse and hide in plain site. Roving groups make it harder for them to set up and their backlines face a constant threat. Sheer numbers can surround an overwhelm the police, or pester them and make their lines waver.