Image is from @Parsani@hexbear.net, who got it from @RNAi@hexbear.net, who got it from Discord.
Thread update: Prigozhin's fucking dead.
The BRICS summit will begin on Tuesday and end on Thursday, with various world leaders, politicians, and representatives meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa.
America's anxiety about the summit has been obvious. They have been complicating the event by pushing for the arrest warrant for Putin to be upheld if he steps foot in the country. While this is a remarkably dangerous and unhinged thing to do - even by America's standards - to the leader of a nuclear superpower who could end the world within an hour, it does betray their desperation. Unfortunately, for those of us who wanted to see Putin surrounded by an army of security guards fending off people holding handcuffs, he has sent his Foreign Minister, Lavrov, in his place. Additionally, America has likely been spreading rumors about the lack of interest in gaining new members in the organization.
With apparently 20 countries formally seeking membership and another 20 informally doing so, the bloc has been elevated, whether they like it or not, to the position of the international vanguard of the non-western world. It is extremely important to say that this is not the same as it becoming an anti-American bloc, and many of them (including original members Brazil and India) wish to keep a friendly relationship with the United States. Nonetheless, with the United States' policy of "if you are not with us, you are against us," and as the US seeks to weaken China, in coming years many of them might find themselves under hostile pressure.
BRICS has to try and solve many problems if they are going to chip away at America's stranglehold of the world economy. These problems - like mitigating the dollar's status as a global reserve currency, and America's dominant role in the world economy - are extremely complicated, and will takes years, even decades, to be overcome. Therefore, one should temper their expectations and excitement for this summit. It took tens of millions of deaths in cataclysmic wars, and then several more decades, for America to reach its current position. I see no reason to believe why its downfall will be any less bloody and elongated.
To end on a less depressing note, I've been searching for appropriate anagrams given the list of countries that seek to join BRICS. Obviously not all of them will make it in, but even so. The best I've come up with is HIBISCUS EMANCIPATES BBBBKKRVV.
(also, "bulletins and news discussion" can be rearranged to "libidinous newsstands uncles".)
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/59d1e060-b123-4a02-a65d-ecb71fd43e10.webp)
Russian opinions on various leaders of Russia/USSR throughout history:![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/5584c84d-2c42-4f33-acc4-0bbedda76021.jpeg)
Interesting notes for people that can't read Cyrillic:
Peter the Great is clear number 1, Catherine the Great is 2nd.
Stalin comes in at 3rd place, with 65% having a positive view and only 20% having a negative view
Brezhnev is in 4th place, and Lenin is sadly in 6th place :(
Dead last is Yeltsin of course, and 2nd last is Gorbachev of course, with nearly 2/3 of the population openly hating them, once again confirming how much of a tragedy the dissolution of the USSR was
Truly an era of the blackest reaction.
Liking Nicky II is a purely ideological statement too, since he was pretty objectively bad as a head of state.
he got 10 points for his fantastic eyebrows
here's the machine-translated poll. very crusty but the names are recognizable
Lenin and Nicholas II getting the same positive approval is very funny. It really shows how the popular conception of Russian history is, disappointingly but unsurprisingly, basically a "Who was the coolest Russian?" contest rather than any concern about ideology.
Nationalism and its consequences and so on and so forth
I am kinda shocked he is so low compared to Brezhnev. Khrushchev did act more aggressively. Maybe it is a mix of him both being closer to Stalin compared to Brezhnev economically, but those who would be positive towards Stalin understandably hate him, and those who are libs would hate him regardless
It's going to be because communists rightfully blame him for causing the chain of events that eventually lead to the end of the ussr by denouncing stalin, and while the whole population won't be able to articulate why they will have had negative Kruschev shit permeate throughout the population over many decades resulting in the popular folk hate for him.
This is how it is for Thatcher here in the UK too really. A lot of people won't be able to explain why she was bad at all, they just know, THEY KNOW. And that's because of the left continually hating on her and the culturally passed on shit.
Those 1-2% “don’t know” responses kind of fuck with me. Imagine being Russian and responding with “who the fuck is Stalin?”
The 1-2% ones are “Declined to answer"
Lenin being in 6th (especially if Stalin is 3rd) baffles me. Can anyone shed some more light on that?
Are you baffled that his ranking was this high or this low?
30 years of liberal anti-communist propaganda did a lot to Lenin’s reputation, and in my opinion already a surprisingly good numbers for Lenin.
And Stalin is obviously a much more difficult figure to denigrate against because he actually defeated the Nazis, industrialized the nation, brought security to the people and turned it into a world’s superpower. (Stalin was demonized and his contributions erased for decades since the XX Congress until he was rehabilitated in the late 2000s, which added even more myths and legends to the figure throughout the entire period)
Also worth noting that Lenin threatens the existing state, whereas Stalin is more tied to nationalism (due to the greatness of the ussr) rather than revolution. This simple difference results in accepting Stalin as a positive nationalist figure while being more critical of Lenin due to the threat anyone learning his ideas would post to the state.
Lenin only led Russia for a short period of time before his medical issues, and it was during very turbulent and hard times. Civil War and other problems, massive suffering. Obviously he helped to end these problems, and the work he did set up the ability for Stalin to industrialize as he did - but that doesn't really get fitted into the popular conception of a leader and what conditions are like while they rule.
Cuz he created Ukraine and empowered minorities too much (especially for russian right). He is also seen more as a hippie heads-in-the-cloud idealist, rather than the way stalin is characterized as a homophobic manly man.
Its so funny to have someone like Ivan on here. Like no one is reasonably gonna have an opinion beyond the literary and cinematic version of him. Peter and Catherine I get cause they directly impacted the nature of modern Russia
Average Russian nationalist
Alhamdullilah Gorbachev finally died lmao rip in piss bozo
I wonder why Krushcev is so low? It's not like huge amounts of the Russian population are anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninists who hate destalinization
actually lots hate krushchev for the anti stalinism, many russian communists now side with the stalinist side of the split.
chicago boys are seething rn