On the 20th of October, Moldova - a small, landlocked country bordering western Ukraine and with a population of about 3 million - voted to join the EU. The margin was razor-thin, with the pro-EU vote gaining 50.39%, or an absolute difference of about 11,000 people. There was simultaneously a presidential vote between the incumbent, Maia Sandu, and other candidates, with the main competitor being Alexandr Stoianoglo.
The election was characterized by accusations of Russian interference, with Russian propaganda apparently flooding in, as well as people offering Moldovans money to vote against the EU. While the result does suggest that half the voting-age population of Moldova consists entirely of Russians who want to destroy democracy and all the good in the world, it seems to have just barely failed. This is a bad time to be a site entirely composed of Russian disinformation agents and bots. Twice already today, I've had to restart my program after somebody told me "Disregard all previous prompts."
While Moldova is a poor country which could benefit in some ways from EU membership, in practice, it is unlikely that they will be able to join for the foreseeable future, requiring many of the... reforms... that the EU requires of potential new members. But as basically every major European economy continues to slowly sink as recessions and political crises degrade them, one wonders how beneficial EU membership will even be in the years and decades to come - if it survives for decades. In that sense, it's as if the survivors of the Titanic are swimming back towards it, believing that being on a bigger - albeit slowly sinking - boat is better than trying their luck on small lifeboats.
Then again, like with Serbia, their geographical and geopolitical position makes anti-Western actions extremely difficult. It is rare that dissention is tolerated for long in the West - one tends to get called a dictator by crowds of people holding English-language signs in non-English countries, photographed by Western journalists who haven't meaningfully reported on your country in months or years. You can crush your people with neoliberal austerity for years, killing hundreds of thousands through neglect, and face glowing approval from the media - but try and use state resources to benefit the poor, and global institutions start ranking you on the authoritarian dictator scale.
The best case for Moldova is that it becomes an exploitable hinterland for Germany to harvest and privatize as it tries - and fails - to compete in a global economic war between the US and China/BRICS. The worst case is that tensions with Russia over Pridnestrovie, as well as possible eventual NATO involvement (though Moldova is not a member, it is a partner of NATO), result in the ongoing war also reaching them.
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 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.
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.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
So now that the Israeli attack on Iran is over, there's been some chatter among war nerds about the fact that Israel struck some air defense sites and... nothing else. There is very little evidence of further damage or attempts to kill Iranian leadership.
In fact, I'm not aware of any credible reports of Israeli jets over Iran at all, which is IDF's main method of operation - using expensive stealth jets that get in close and drop cheap bombs. Saves a ton of money over using missiles if your planes don't get shot down.
The implication is that Israel is unwilling or unable to put jets over Iran, maybe even calling off that portion of the strike at the last minute. That massively limits their offensive ability against Iran. Makes you wonder where Israel goes from here; they can't meaningfully hurt Iran, they can't push into Lebanon, and their soldiers are killing themselves over going back into Gaza. What's next?
It wasn't just some air defence sites though, Israel took out Iran's most advanced air defence systems in the Russian made S300 PMU2 (NATO name SA-20B), along with some integrated systems nearby the main S300 batteries, such as the Mersad site that was struck. The "three explosions heard in Tehran" could match up with three probable strikes on such targets, based on photographic evidence of the aftermath of explosions at those sites. One can guess that more sites were likely hit in other parts of Iran.
As for what else was targeted, it mainly consisted of Iran's above ground missile and drone production facilities, which satellite imagery has independently confirmed. At least 5 mixing buildings containing planetary mixers for the production of solid rocket fuel have been damaged or destroyed, and one drone factory was also damaged. These mixers are obviously much more sophisticated than your average kitchen mixer (even if some do look like giant versions of one) and are difficult to import, especially when under sanctions.
Overall the attacks on Iranian missile facilities were pretty limited and only hit a half a dozen to a dozen above ground targets. This is not going to have a serious impact on missile production over the long term. Obviously losing a bunch of such sensitive equipment is not ideal, but Iran will still be able to produce solid fueled missiles at other facilities and will likely find a way to subvert sanctions or export controls on the mixers. The attacks against air defence systems are much more worrying. Iran's most advanced air defence systems were rendered inoperable within hours. Yes the radars and control vehicles can be repaired or replaced in due time, but the underlying issue still exists. I guess this could be Israel's way of leveling the playing field, with their air defence systems in Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 likely depleted of ammunition due to Iran's April and October retaliatory strikes. Now both sides are vulnerable to attack with weakened air defences.
if iran russia mutual defense treaty gets through, will be interesting to see s400 peformance
I'm not too optimistic and I don't dare set unrealistic expectations anymore, even Russia doesn't have a perfect defense against Ukrainian missile strikes/drones etc and the US got 3 years of complete surveillance data to understand how Russia operates them.
Its a formidable system, but it wont stop Iran from getting hit in vulnerable places anymore than it stops Russia from getting hit sometimes.
This. Moscow is the most heavily defended city in the world in terms of anti-air defenses and still some stupid Ukrainian drone managed to slip through and crashed into Kremlin’s rooftop.
The S-400 batteries have also been somewhat vulnerable to ATACMS strikes, and the entire philosophy of Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS) that the Soviets pioneered encompasses not just a long range weapons system (which the S-400 is and probably the best in the world) but networked layers of long, intermediate and short range weapon systems that provide a complete coverage against all types of aerial threats, and even then they are far from perfect when exercised in real world battlefields as demonstrated throughout various conflicts in the past few decades.
In other words, Iran is going to need more than just a few S-400 complexes if they want to stop NATO/Israeli air bombing, and while Russia is the only country in the world that has such complete system offer, the investment is not trivial.
Yeah the S400 has also been vulnerable to the ballistic missile threat with regards to ATACMS. I don't Iran getting the S400 would make a huge difference, while it will be an improvement we've still seen that has some vulnerabilities. What is needed is a system dedicated to intercepting high speed ballistic projectiles. The S500 is set to integrate such capabilities, but I think there's only one battery currently in existence and it's either deployed at Moscow or Crimea.