This site is sometimes so funny outside of our beautiful news mega, I literally understand nothing about what is happening outside of this cozy thread. It’s always some drama about some extremely online thing that takes over the entire site and causes half of the users to quit.
Putin’s words lost all meaning a long time ago. It’s very obvious that the only type of escalation that Russia is currently committed to is within the borders of Ukraine, so even if they escalate now it won’t go further than a bridge or a dam across the Dnieper. He’s not willing to do anything that jeopardises progress on the Ukrainian front. Despite all the teasing and encroachment from the West, it’s still neolibs that have the final word in Russia, and those neolibs live in a world where Russia sells gas and oil to the EU a day after a peace agreement is signed in Ukraine. Ukraine invaded old Russian territory using western weapons and western tanks, still nothing happened. What options does he even have to escalate? Sell missiles to the Houthis? No because Saudi Arabia are still his besties. Give Iran more weapons? Already happening. Strike a US asset in Europe? Will literally never happen.
The US and their dogs allowing Ukraine to strike Russian territory with long-range missiles doesn’t change anything. Russia under Putin are committed to deescalation until the Ukraine war is wrapped up, and Ukraine’s biggest issues are in Ukraine itself. Hitting an oil refinery in Rostov won’t stop Russian advances in Donetsk. Those strikes might affect Russian supply lines a bit, but Russia has a lot of options with different paths to take to reach the front.
Russians have entered the central districts of Kupiansk, Chasiv Yar and Kurakhove, all within 3-4 days. Insane pace compared to just a few months ago. All three advances will completely reshape the upcoming year of the war in Ukraine. Taking eastern Kupiansk will collapse the north Oskol front for Ukraine and force a withdrawal from a significant chunk of land. The fall of Kurakhove will force a withdrawal from south Donetsk into less fortified regions, which will most likely mean that Russia enters Dnipro Oblast for the first time in early 2025. And the fall of Chasiv Yar means that Russia will control the highest points in the whole Donetsk region and will open up an opportunity to basically roll down from the hills of Chasiv Yar into the Kramatorsk - Konstantinivka line. We’re firmly in the opening stages of a complete collapse of the AFU now, the way that the Kupiansk offensive has happened was unthinkable a few months ago. Russians just drove like 5km deep into Ukrainian lines with basically no resistance and could then reinforce that opening quite easily. All that is happening while Russia have seized border villages with no resistance in Chernihiv and Kharkov Oblasts, and have also started a new offensive in Zaporozhye/Donetsk close to the strong fortified towns of Velika Novosilka, Gulaypole and Orikhiv. Disastrous situation for the AFU.
The Haka in the NZ parliament video has been quite viral on Arab social media circles in the past two days, and it has generated some pretty interesting reactions that I will share here.
Reaction type number 1: why? The most common reaction is people being completely unaware of the history of Maori peoples in NZ, so they share or comment on the video in an attempt to understand the context of the video. Many comments ridiculing the thing, but most were just curious about who these people are.
Reaction type number 2: damn this is cool. Many thought it was cool and that it shows that Maoris are brave people that are not afraid to capture the white man’s institution to do their dance and show their culture.
Reaction type number 3: this is a defeated people. This type of reaction was the most interesting in my opinion, because people made a lot of comparisons to Palestinians inside Israel who participate in elections and have representation in the Knesset. It was a lot of “is this really it?”, this is a defeated people whose culture and way of life was mostly decimated by colonisers, and now they’re standing in the white man’s institutions wearing the white man’s clothing and doing song and dance. I have to emphasise that most of these reactions actually came from a place of love for native people, but they saw the Haka in this particular context as a sign of humiliation, not strength. One guy wrote that Israel might let three Palestinians do a dabke in the Knesset in 2050 as they sign a law that deports all remaining Arabs in Greater Israel.
I think that your northern arrow is a bit too ambitious, a more realistic scenario for the upcoming few months is that Russia consolidates the eastern portion of Kupiansk and don’t cross the Oskol River. They would then push down the Oskol until Borova and collapse the whole Oskol front. A latter stage would be pushing down from Russian territory towards Veliki Burluk and then down the western parts of the Oskol again until Kupiansk proper, mostly to keep supply lines open and avoid a repeat of late 2022 where they overextended into the Kharkov countryside. Vovchansk is way too valuable as a firebag where they can keep FABbing good Ukrainian units, and there’s too much open exposed ground there. Ukrainian units in Kharkov are also still well-equipped and not as exhausted as in the Donbass, Russia can’t risk too much there.
Two unrelated thoughts:
Trump’s batshit crazy cabinet actually proves that voting Trump was the correct accelerationist position. If you wanted to accelerate the downfall of American hegemony and the weakening of American institutions by appointing the biggest dumbasses on the planet, then you got your wish with this 2nd Trump admin. I sympathize with Americans comrades, but chickens come home to roost like the great martyr Malcolm X said.
Russians actually entered deep into Kupiansk, I can’t believe my eyes. Actually insane development, I didn’t expect this at all so quickly honestly. It says a lot about the state of Ukrainian defences at this point. The story of Kupiansk is very interesting and serves as a good blueprint of the future of how Ukrainian territories will be integrated into Russia. Russia took over Kupiansk without a fight in February 2022, because the mayor was an intelligent man who spared the city from unnecessary bloodshed by calling the Russian command and telling them that they’re free to enter the city without needlessly destroying infrastructure and civilian life. Civilians stayed, got their wages from Moscow, repairs were done quickly, civilians didn’t leave, schools switched to Russian which the population already spoke perfectly, and that angered western media so much. When the Ukrainians took back the city in September 2022, mass arrests took place and sob stories were planted in media. The city was turned into a military hellhole by the AFU and most civilians had to flee. Russia kinda stabbed those people in the back during that disastrous period, but that’s another discussion.
these are the people that lecture you about anti-semitism and racism
Just a few random thoughts about Russian strategy and current short term goals in Ukraine. I’ve been religiously following this war since the first few days and I guess like many of you nerds here, one begins to sort of develop an understanding of military affairs after consuming so much content in a short period. My analysis of the current South Donetsk offensive is that it is the most coherent and well-executed campaign since the start of the war. Previous long-term Russian and Ukrainian offensives were like separate islands of small gains, never joining together into one single front that drastically collapses an entire part of the front. Ukraine for example during their 2023 summer offensive attacked in three different directions, south of Orikhiv, west of Bakhmut, and south of Velika Novosilka. All those fronts never had a realistic chance of actually linking up, as they were too far from each other and there was never a real coherent “what happens next” plan. Same with the Russian offensive in the start of the war. They attacked near Kiev, near Kharkov, from the South and north of the old LPR territory, but the first two fronts could never realistically collapse an entire sector and link up to be one continuous front with supply lines entirely located in the captured zones. Even Bakhmut was the same, Russia made a dent in the frontline, but the lack of offensives in Siversk and Toretsk meant that Russia couldn’t collapse an entire sector and straighten out the line again, so they only took the city and some territory around it.
Their current southern offensive is different though, with three big arrows that are actually threatening the entire South Donetsk sector for Ukraine. An advance of a few km from each direction now is lethal for the AFU. They would lose one of the most fortified sectors of the front, and escape into open fields with no fortifications all the way to Pavlograd. According to a map of fortifications that I saw last week, the whole section from Kurakhovo to the centre of Dnipro Oblast has barely any defensible ground, and the opening of that sector for Russian troops means that they will be able to outflank Ukraine’s north-south trench systems in Zaporozhye, and the east-west systems in fortified central Donetsk. 2025 will be extremely decisive for this war if Trump doesn’t pull off a 4D chess peace agreement.
Some Mozambique questions that I have on my mind after recently watching a vlog by a Palestinian-Jordanian vlogger who was in Maputo.
How anti-imperialist is FRELIMO these days and how come that they seem mostly kinda hated by the locals?
How prevalent is drug use and general crime in the country? There seems to be crazy amounts of drug users in some neighborhoods and even the metal car logo thingy in front of cars get stolen and sold in criminal markets that are semi-allowed in the country.
Has FRELIMO achieved some success in terms of addressing widespread poverty and living conditions in the slums? The situation seemed horrible from what I saw in the video.
How deep is Portuguese colonial penetration these days? We know that the French never really left the colonies despite the independence of the colonies. What’s the situation with Portuguese imperialism?
Our gigachad is still being based as hell
This hot dude threw one of the Israeli hooligan fascists in the river. Happy he’s on our side, we need more hot dudes with winner energy.
It’s not over for Kamala actually, just wait for the diaspora pro-EU votes to trickle in folks
Wait where’s 72T? It’s not the same without our bravest fighter.
Back online after two weeks of taking care of irl stuff. Random disconnected thoughts incoming:
Aunt and her kids have successfully left Lebanon into Syria and then into Iraq, very happy with that. Thank God for the Iraqis, we’re forever indebted to them for just how extraordinarily generous they’ve been with the refugees. Fuck the Egyptians for not even doing 0.1% of that for the people of Gaza.
Son is already nearly four months old. Very nice kid tbh, not too many sleepless nights so far.
Damn the Ukraine war is progressing very fast now, I don’t even have time to learn the names of the villages anymore. Cursed town Ugledar might have been the glue that held together Ukraine’s defence in the south-east. Nonstop collapse since Ugledar fell and now we are looking at the first big Russian arrow since the first weeks of the war. South Donetsk is done if Russia reach Andriivka, that entire Kurakhove corner will fall in matter of weeks. Very interesting developments on the Oskol sector as well, don’t understand why Ukraine is letting their east Kupyansk grouping get pinned towards the river and not withdrawing behind a very defensible river line.
I don’t believe the reports about any ceasefire whether in Lebanon or Gaza. The Doha talks about Gaza are just a last ditch effort to provide a “peace in the Middle East” boost for Kamala, there’s little real substance there. Same with the Lebanon negotiations, there’s no incentive for any side here. Israel continue their forever war, Americans sell guns, Iranians have an excuse to lob missiles at Israel whenever they want now and Hezbollah are inflicting record damage on IDF losers.
Help me out Hexxies, who will win the election? My instincts say it’s big wet Donnie, but idk these days. How are the polls looking? I read reddit and in their world Kamala will win every single state, while right wings dumbasses on Twitter say that NY is a swing state.
Hey fellow multipolarity enjoyer. Have you received your 500₽ BRICS voucher card?
First row is Ukraine vs Russia, last row is just people, middle two fully random
Israel killed Celine Haidar yesterday, a player of the Lebanese Women’s National Team. FIFA member Israel is actively killing international players of other FIFA members