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.
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/1c297575-19ec-4d86-8efd-90026c553f62.jpeg)
I've become like really actually prejudiced against the Baltics, like not "I have a cogent critique of the ruling regime of the nation state of Lithuania" or "Official sanction of revisitionist history and anti-semetic violence within the Baltics is bad", but like prejudice against the people and the non-Nazi parts of the culture. Gonna work on that. : |
This is the correct thing to recognise before you become terminally internet brained.
On May 6, 1943, members of the Latvian Anti-Fascist Organization were executed by the nazi invaders in the Biķernieki Forest, in Riga.
The partisans attacked the executioners with their bare fists and sang the Internationale before their death.
Arvīds Rendnieks.
Leader of the Riga anti-fascist underground.
Electric mechanic at the "Vairogs" factory.
Ernests Saulītis.
Commander of the partisan group "Varonis" ("Hero").
Ēriks Stepiņš.
Komsomol member. Factory worker.
Kārlis Liepkāja.
Komsomol Member.
Leader of of the komsomol section at the 1st Economic Technical School.
Vikentijs Čeksters.
Radioman of the partisan group "Varonis" ("Hero").
Aleksejs Makarovs.
Schoolteacher at the 7th Russian School in Riga.
Partisan Fighter.
And they all sang the Internationale
Thank you, this means much to me, I love our martyred comrades. They will live forever.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
There are some based Balts out there, but 30+ years of anti-communist government and education means that much like with Americans, you need to sus out how tightly they will cling to western chauvinism and white supremacy before offering respect.
Communist Balts are extra cool, for this same reason.
It true. I was very foolish to let my prejudice grow like this.
Me to myself: "Oh yeah, I wonder about that one Lithuanian artist Jonas Mekas, what are his politics like?"
Wikipedia:
There is no “debate”. There are facts and there are people who don’t like them.
He's no longer Latvian, but this guy is hilariously based
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beness_Aijo
God damn. That is a hell of a life.
The Baltics are filled with anti-communists anti-antifa gremlins and like most Europeans, they have a massively inflated sense of self-importance. Madagascar has almost 5 times the population and almost 4 times the land mass of the entire Baltics combined, but when's the last time you hear people talk about Madagascar? There's like Tier 3 Chinese cities with more people living in them than the Baltics. More people live in Missouri than the Baltics. And it's not like they're bustling centers of economic growth or scientific innovation either. The only reason why we have to constantly hear about the Baltics instead of Madagascar is because of their place in anti-communist history, the fact that they ceded from the Soviet Union and how they freed themselves from the "imperialist Soviet yoke" and now are under threat from the Asiatic ruZZian mongrel hordes.
With their small populations, low birth rates and high emigration numbers it's not like they have a future anyway
Would help if there were like even a single example of an anti-imperialist figure from these nations.
Just cause the post-Cold War government sucks and there were Nazi collaborators present doesn't mean there aren't/weren't anti-imperialist figures from those nations. The Baltic SSRs couldn't have existed without local Communist parties run by people from the Baltics. Just look through the leadership of those parties, for example Johannes Lauristin.
Also don't forget
Disco Elysium was made in the Baltics and is influenced by how bleak these countries feel for the people who still believe in a better future
Yeah, It's still like six million people, they're not all assholes, even if a lot of them are. We just mostly deal with the worst nationalist scum and NATO bootlickers, but that's not everyone.