Well, Iran and their allies' response may happen sometime this week and apparently they aren't talking to the US in order to negotiate how and where they will hit Israel (and Shoigu arrived in Tehran rather auspiciously), the Bangladeshi government just fell, F16s have been given to Ukraine, there are fascist riots in the UK, and Japan just had its worst stock fall since 1987 and seems to be taking several other countries/corporations with it. I don't really know where to look right now.
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.
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Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
no, It's more of a Kursk offensive. Literally
11 tanks vs. 3,253 tanks
a bit different
Kursk reenactment society has lost a lot of members last year
seeing WW2 numbers makes me feel like it's fake. Like it's a mythical legend in some bygone impossible era. A single battle with 3.5 million men, 10,000 tanks, 56,000 artillery guns and 5,000 aircraft. Just one battle. That dwarfs the entire entire war in Ukraine by orders of magnitude, and it was over in 1 month
How is it that people with less industrial capacity were able to field such massive armies but nowadays the west is struggling to even produce enough for this tiny skirmish in comparison? truly boggles the mind.
Two things:
Equipment in WWII was significantly simpler to produce, even the overly complicated Nazi tanks
Many countries don't actually have greater military industrial capacity than they did then
The first time I read the casualty numbers for various WW2 events like Battle of Kursk, Battle of Stalingrad, Operation Bagration etc., I definitely cried. I mean, obviously I grew up learning about the horrors of WW2 on a conceptual level and even seeing videos or movies. But that incredible loss of life is just mind numbing, not to mention the many more who weren't killed but injured or with psychological trauma.
The cost of equipment and vehicles was significantly lower because they are also considerably less complicated and intricate than modern equipment and vehicles. A tank is a good example. Broadly, a T-34 is effectively a metal hull around a cannon and an engine on tracks. A modern tank, like a T-90 or whatever, is that but bigger, with complex layers of armor that is no longer just a thick sheet of metal, all sorts of sensors and communication equipment, autoloaders, etc etc. Same goes for pretty much everything else: planes, other armored vehicles, even the individual weapons themselves. The vast majority of those 3.5 million men at the Battle of Kursk were running around with simple bolt actions using iron sights and had no armor besides a helmet. Now, everyone has an assault rifle with at least some doodads on it, like a sight, an armor vest, etc. Compounding all of this is the obvious atrophy of industry, particularly military industry, that has happened since, though to a much greater extent in the West than elsewhere.
Makes you wonder if a nation could just make quantity over quality and flood in tens of thousands of these cheap tanks. Would that work? That’s effectively drone warfare now with fpv disposable drones, and it’s proving very effective
The problem with that would be the fact that pretty much anything bigger than a rifle/LMG could penetrate those old tanks (bit of an exaggeration), since their armor is more or less just a thick sheet of metal. A lot of very intense engineering goes into making sure modern tank crews aren't instantly vaporized when someone decides to shoot an extremely fast tungsten dart at it. However, I do remember seeing at least a couple reports of what were effectively land-based kamikaze drones, like a small land vehicle loaded with explosives and then driven into enemy positions.
Regarding the quantity vs quality question, I think we're actually seeing that dynamic play out in real time to a certain extent. Most NATO equipment is overly complex, hard to maintain, hanger-queen-esque type stuff that obviously makes it considerably more expensive. Meanwhile, Soviet surplus/Russian equipment may lack some of the fancy features or qualities of some NATO equipment, but they're built in actually useful numbers. Not only that, but they're built to actually fight a real peer-to-peer war, specifically in Eastern Europe/West Russia, in contrast to some NATO pieces that seem like they were just designed to grift MIC funding or were designed solely for imperial occupation. And we're now seeing the results of this with Ukraine running low on pretty much all types of materiel and Russia is very much not.
Like what azarova said.
The war in ukraine is the story of finding the balance between complexity and quantity.
War sucked harder back then. Even harder if we go back to WW1.