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.
Despite the predictions and assertions of various NATO-aligned commentators that Russia’s influence is waning, the opposite generally appears to be occurring. ASEAN has become more strongly aligned with Russia despite claims to the contrary. In Central Asia, there has been a propaganda push to declare that countries there are “emerging from Russia’s shadow”, while in reality, as Bhadrakumar analyzes, Russia’s significant economic growth and ongoing march towards victory in Ukraine is creating opportunities for further integration, not separation, and there are no major political shifts there in terms of Russian ties. And in Niger, Russian soldiers have now entered an airbase which once hosted American soldiers, now kicked out, and generally Russia’s diplomacy and economic deals (nuclear power plant construction, military equipment, grain shipments, etc) have accelerated in Africa.
Where Russia’s influence has actually seemed to decrease (outside of the West, of course) is in Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh’s remarkably rapid collapse in late 2023 demonstrated that Russia was not willing to escalate things in defense of Armenia to fend off Azerbaijan. One hundred thousand Armenians - most but not all of them in the region - fled in advance to avoid mass persecution, which received remarkably little attention by a West which calls itself overwhelmingly concerned with borders changing due to military action as in Ukraine. Since then, Armenia seems to be on some kind of self-annihilating bender, allured by the potential of Western military and economic deals. Armenia froze its membership in the CSTO due to its failure to protect them, and the head of NATO, Stoltenberg, visited the region in March. The West has offered up hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to Armenia and is helping them “modernize their military”; given the poor track record of Western military equipment in Ukraine, one wonders why they’re even bothering. RAND has advocated for a balancing act; America should, in their eyes, realize that they can’t entirely remove Russia’s influence but nonetheless should make inroads to protect Armenia from Azerbaijan (which is an interesting position given that Israel provided arms to Azerbaijan to help them take Nagorno-Karabakh).
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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
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.
My mother passed away peacefully today in hospital, she didn’t have any pain.
I’ll try to keep posting news when I have time this week.
Hasan brought up a good point on his stream earlier. The “safe zone” is like 20 km from Rafah. That is not an easy hike to make quickly for a young person in good health. Now consider how much harder it is for an elderly person, a child, or someone who is injured. And that’s before considering that Gazans have been living in famine conditions for a while now. As a parent, even as a matter of life and death, I don’t think my little kids could walk 20 km in the timeframe the IOF is demanding.
This is inhuman evil. The Zionist entity is truly on an eye-to-eye standing with the Nazis, and all their enablers like the US are with them too. Death to “israel” and death to America.
Hamas knew the invasion of Rafah was imminent and made the correct decision to publicly announce as loud as possible that they accepted the terms of the ceasefire agreement.
This in turn put the zionists into an impossible position. Either they accept the terms of the ceasefire which would necessitate their eventual withdrawal from Gaza (accepting defeat) or they go forward with the incredible war crime of invading Rafah after the entire world was notified that Hamas accepted a ceasefire.
The US chose the latter. The zionist entity will be annihilated for their arrogance, God willing.
Additionally Yemen has already announced “phase 4” of their operations earlier this week. The pressure is on.
Pray for the martyrs and all the resistant peoples in the region and especially the steadfast people of Gaza. Pray for victory for the Resistance.
Reminder
Looks like those fucking ghouls are going into Rafah.
May there be hundreds upon hundreds of
Absolutely insane wording here from the times
Genocide Joe doubles down, endorses collective punishment, says support for apartheid state is “ironclad,” refuses to mention Palestinian deaths or starvation.
Biden says Palestinians are “driven by ancient desire to wipe out Jewish people off the face of the Earth”.
Not surprising, but a revealing moment of police culture regarding the protests here.
For those that can’t see the Twitter video…
Police are violently arresting protestors on the bridge. Batons out. Often five or sex different officers tackling individuals, kneeling on them, getting licks in.
One officer in a riot helmet and drawn baton is stood to one side, watching, but not wanting to get stuck in with the other five or six officers with a protester already on the ground.
A much larger superior comes over to him aggressively, getting in his face, and yells *“Let’s go! Let’s go! You’re the police! Let’s go! Don’t be a fucking traitor!”
Not only is this very clearly gang shit, but the idea that he could be a ‘traitor’ clearly shows that the police view this as a war against the protesters.
Again, this won’t be surprising to anyone. But it’s laid out so perfectly in this five seconds or so of footage.
All i can do is wish good luck and plan for revenge from the sidelines. Free Palestine. Death to Israel. Death to America.
12 Israeli soldiers hospitalized after their tank runs over a wasp nest
WASP INTIFADA NOW 🐝🐝🐝Hmm really not suspicious how all news outlets are plastered with talk about “The rise of antisemitism in the US” without explaining what they mean by antisemitism
Fascist shithole
My eye twitching as ITV News goes from talking about how the Israeli Eurovision singer cried in her dressing room because people were mean to her to casually mentioning that tens of thousands of Palestinians are being forced to try and leave Rafah like they were comparable in any way.
NASA CONTRACTOR WARNS THAT BOEING LAUNCH MUST BE STOPPED “BEFORE SOMETHING CATASTROPHIC HAPPENS”
Quite interesting, particularly with boeing whistleblowers dying frequently recently.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-contractor-warns-boeing-valves
