Image is sourced from this article depicting the 28th ASEAN Plus Three Summit, which took place at the same time as the 47th ASEAN Summit.
Last week concluded the 47th summit of ASEAN in Malaysia as well as a swathe of concurrent summits surrounding ASEAN. For those unfamiliar, formally, China is not a member of ASEAN, but is part of the ASEAN Plus Three (as part of the “Three”, alongside Japan and Occupied Southern Korea). And while not really ASEAN, there is also a yet wider organization, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which tacks on Australia and New Zealand to the group of countries that are currently in ASEAN (which is the single largest trade bloc on the planet). At the summit, Timor-Leste was officially introduced into ASEAN, making it the 11th country to do and the first since Cambodia in 1999.
Many important figures throughout Asia, as well as Trump, Ramaphosa, and Lula, attended the event. As you can imagine, Trump’s appearance was not exactly positive - signing four rather coerced bilateral deals there, including with Malaysia, which forced those countries to buy American goods in exchange for certain exemptions from Trump’s high tariff regime. The US is currently in a bit of a panic due to China restricting access to rare earths, a critical component of many weapons technologies (and electronics in general) and is looking around for countries to help supply them. After the summit, the US and China signed a deal related to tariffs and rare earths, but it seems very unlikely that this is the end of the saga; the US politically, economically, and militarily cannot tolerate China’s existence as a sovereign actor and will try to overcome them until the American Empire topples.
Meanwhile, China did as they ordinarily do, and urged higher regional integration and trade without high tariffs, as well as adherence to the Global Governance Initiative (which, as we here never tire of noting, is an interesting thing to try and encourage while the US only more feverishly violates the sovereignty of nations everywhere). One hopes they’re supplying a bit more than just speeches to Venezuela, Cuba, and beyond, as the US prepares to start bombing.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
I’m just going to copy/paraphrase my comment from the now locked previous megathread. All estimates based on publicly available information.
Wouldn’t say so, Venezuela has had these Kh-31/AS-17 Krypton supersonic anti ship missiles ever since they bought the Su-30. You can find images of Venezuelan Su-30s equipped with Kh-31 from 10+ years ago. Russian military or Wagner technicians may have helped Venezuela restore these capabilities, but they have possessed them for some time.
Their relatively short range of 40-60 nautical miles(nmi)/70-110km, and dependence on being air launched by Su-30s mean that it’s unlikely they’ll have any effect on a conflict. At most, Venezuela could score some lucky hits, similar to Argentina in the Falklands war. Though when Argentina did that, they were up against combat air patrols (CAPs) of Harriers. Venezuela is up against F-35B CAPs, a much better aircraft for air to air engagements, supersonic, stealth and already shown to be armed with AIM-120D AMRAAM air to air missiles, with a maximum range of 90-100nmi/160-180km. That’s not mentioning the anti aircraft and anti missile capabilities of AEGIS onboard the destroyers and cruisers. SM-6 missiles launched by AEGIS (anti aircraft and anti ship) have a maximum range in excess of 200nmi/370km.
What Venezuela needs is a longer stick, and an ability to use it after conflict breaks out. The P-270 Moskit (Kh-41) and P-800 Oniks (Kh-61) supersonic anti ship missiles offer significantly more range and can be air launched or ground launched. Kh-41 is said to offer a maximum range between 135-160nmi/250-300km when air launched and flying on a combined high-lo trajectory. Export variants of the Oniks/Kh-61 offer similar maximum ranges and flight profiles. Modernised Russian versions of the Oniks/Kh-61 offer maximum ranges of 320-430nmi/600-800km. A ground launch or lo-lo flight profile will significantly reduce this theoretical maximum range. Though modifying the Su-30s to carry and launch them like Russia’s Su-33s can, or transporting missile batteries/ground launch infrastructure alongside the missiles for ground launch, would be a significant task. I don’t think the effort will be made, it’s quite unlikely. But it is theoretically possible. Ground launched modernised P-800 Oniks would be their best bet here realistically, gives them a long range option not dependent on aircraft. Hezbollah apparently had some export variants of this.
Su-33/Su-27K with Kh-41 in between the engine intakes/nacelles, and Kh-61 on the weapons trolley:
Person for scale with a Kh-61, massive missiles, an Su-33 can only carry one Kh-41 or Kh-61 on the centreline:
For improved anti aircraft capabilities, the Su-30s Mech radars would need to be replaced by the Irbis-E, so they can fire the R-37M active radar guided air to air missiles. Currently they only have the active radar guided R-77 and semi active R-27. There’s no point in supplying R-37Ms without a radar replacement, they can fly much further than the Mech radar can see. Again, very unlikely.