My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
The last week has had a lot of Trump admin dipshittery that isn’t important enough to be worth remarking on, so I’m just going to skip right past all that. The sanctions campaign against Iran appears to have stalled before it even left the starting line, with China saying that, nope, they aren’t going to cut off their ally for the sake of their enemy. From what I’ve gathered from Naked Capitalism’s (albeit limited) reporting on the state of Iran’s economy, the impression I get is that while inflation is running kinda wild, everything else, including state revenues, are doing sufficiently well that there isn’t going to be an economic collapse this year nor probably next year if we assume a continued no-deal situation over Hormuz.
The underlying geopolitical situation has had some interesting little developments. Iran and Oman appears to have worked out their plan for joint control over Hormuz. Ansarallah is continuing their explosive campaign against the Saudis, who are now begging the US for help. Additionally, the ever-barking never-biting Türkiye is showing some signs that they might soon, finally, after three years of witnessing outright genocide, do 1 (one) (the first numerical digit) action that isn’t to the Zionist’s direct benefit, by putting up a modicum of resistance in defence of their puppet in Syria; but, quite frankly, I’m not holding my breath on anything truly substantial happening while Erdogan’s in charge.
The state of oil flows in and around Hormuz are very hotly debated right now. Many of the oil flow numbers can be dismissed out of hand because they aren’t reflective of the reality of Iranian control and vision of the strait. Due to the narrowness of the strait, full visual coverage of the ships travelling through the channel can be achieved with technology no more advanced than a dozen people with binoculars and a not-especially-tall mountain. However, figures that are around 3-5 million barrels per day (compared to the pre-war 20 million per day) seems plausible when including Iran allowing some allied vessels out (notably Iraqi and Chinese vessels, among others). This, plus China’s rather odd actions in the oil market over the last six months, have resulted in the US’s SPR now draining at “only” 4-6 million barrels per week, compared to 8-9 earlier in the war. However, the war’s impact on fertilizer and diesel stockpiles and prices are now unignorable even to those with their heads in the sand, with anxiety steadily building in the mainstream media about food crises next year.
Meanwhile, Trump has decided to pick fights with Canada due to their strange unwillingness to graciously hand over their sovereignty to the US, with the two countries now in a tariff war. That being said, oil seems to be one product that neither side wants to fight over: the US needs a producer, and Canada needs a customer. The only other country in the vicinity with major oil reserves is Venezuela, who has been in the news a lot lately for precisely this reason, but they simply don’t have the production to do much of anything to alleviate the US’s stockpile issues and likely still won’t by the time Trump has left office, and so they can be safely dismissed as a significant player in this ongoing global energy conflict.
On the subject of naval trade routes, a fascinating development is that Russia has finally unveiled the Northern Sea Route as a regular maritime passage, with a small fleet of eight Chinese vessels taking the route as a test run in mid-August. From Shanghai to Hamburg, the route is a little over 7000 nautical miles and goes through no chokepoints (though I suppose the Bering Strait could hypothetically become one), compared to the Suez route which is nearly 11,000 nautical miles and goes through three chokepoints (Malacca, Bab el-Mandab, Suez). Russia has the world’s only nuclear icebreaker fleet, and the increased power from those reactors is necessary to provide the sheer force to break up the ice along the route, making them even more uniquely situated to benefit from the route. Many countries, China foremost among them, have identified the advantage of not being subject to chokepoints and hostile waters as the US navy continues its rapid transition to outright piracy, so it’ll be interesting to see to what extent the route is adopted in the coming years.
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 the Zionists’ 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
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.
Russian forces have encircled a grouping of Kiev regime troops in northern Kharkov oblast:
https://southfront.press/military-situation-in-ukraine-and-ukrainian-attacks-on-russian-territory-on-september-3-2026-maps-update/ (see the first two maps)
This is disputed. Russian doctrine (more or less a modernized deep battle doctrine) generally discourages outright encirclement - its risky and bloody for both sides - when instead the usual goal is to sit along a narrow corridor to plink off enemy reinforcement and logistics until the position is given up (relatively) peacefully.
https://t.me/AMK_Mapping/37118
AMK Mapping calls himself “Pro Ukraine” but has been very reliable imo. It absolutely doesnt cloud his reporting from what I can tell.
Question: how is it bloody to encircle enemy troops? Won’t soldiers just route and surrender after several days of encirclement without resupplying, especially given the recruitment conditions in Ukraine?
If you encircle a force, they’ll fight desperately for survival, possibly to the last soldier
If you leave a route for retreat, they’ll take that opportunity for survival eventually and flee
That’s at least how Sun Tzu-ian war theory posits the calculus
Plus, soldiers that manage to flee for home take morale-destroying stories with them.
I sometimes wonder if the Iranian military deliberately does this with American warships. Sink a carrier and the American public will go apeshit and demand bloody vengeance. Make conditions miserable for its crew, and those sailors will go home and gossip about how the war is a pointless shitshow.
However, it depends on what the objective is and the relative strength of your enemy. If the enemy is weak enough, then encircling and sieging works just fine, ask the Romans.
Sure, and there have been plenty more recent takes on How To War since Sun Tzu, taking into account more modern technological developments and all. Still, the text does remain a classic for a reason, not all of which is vaguely orientalist tech bros picking up The Art of War during their business school degree
Again, why? What ensures rank and file soldiers won’t surrender if offered a way out?
Spitballing here, but I’m thinking a loosely positioned force is more likely to have stragglers at the edges, ready to capitulate and with more opportunity to do so, opposed to when you have a highly concentrated because encircled force that is stacked on one defensive last stand position - at that point, either everyone surrenders at once, or nobody is likely to be able to do so alone, since y’know, deserters are shot. Better to leave a little hole in the circle, through which forces can retreat and then either make it a shooting gallery or take em prisoner one by one or just let them leave, basically you can do whatever with that opening, crushing the enemy still remains an option
It’s also why Sun Tzu says you should treat your prisoners well, since when enemy soldiers believe they will be treated fairly, should they surrender, they are much more likely to do so. I’m not saying anything about Russian treatment of prisoners when I say the average Ukrainian soldiers probably believes they will not be treated fairly. Propaganda plays a huge role here obviously
the “exhausted surrender” option is just one possibility that might come after a long and bloody encirclement. For example, it took months to reduce the Germans at Stalingrad to this state.
As others have said here already - a competent force will immediately try to break out of the encirclement, because that’s when its relative strength is highest. When the Germans surrounded entire Soviet field armies during Operation Typhoon in October of 1941, the Soviets immediately started breakout attempts towards the east (their friendly lines). The Germans had to put up immense struggles to try and contain these “cauldrons”, there’s reports of machine gunners having shot through their entire ammunition (plus the MG barrels) as the breakout attempts were that massed and desperate. (If you want to read up on this, David Stahel’s “Operation Typhoon” is excellent) Plus your blocking troops might come under fire from the other side, as relief forces attempt to break through to the encircled troops (this happened in Stalingrad, for example). And finally, you have to “clear” an encirclement in “mopping-up operations”, which depending on the size and strength of the encircled forces might be more or less bloody. Not everybody surrenders at first contact like the Iraqi Army in 1991. The Germans never really cleared their huge 1941 pockets in modern Belarus, and that’s how the partisan movement there got kickstarted.
Granted, these examples are from 20th century mechanized warfare and they might not really be that applicable to the Ukraine battlefield today. But hopefully this give you an idea that there are downsides to encirclement battles, and competent commanders might not want to become engaged in them. Of course, the Germans and the Nazis loved 'em - but maybe that’s reason enough to question the entire idea.
Depends on the tactical situation, which is always changing and which Russian leadership would be far more intimately aware than any armchair general. But yes, at the outset, Russia would use pincer manouvers and funnel Ukrainian logistical and supply routes in a way that allowed them to destroy reinforcements and supplies as they came. But if the Ukrainian forces are as depleted as some sources are saying then moving to complete encirclements would make sense as Ukraine wouldn’t be able to break out or in thus forcing a total loss of the encircled force. Further diminishing any remaining fighting capacity and morale.
What does the yellow represent?
If you have fire control over the last road in or out, isn’t that effectively encircled?
I’m pretty sure Sun Tzu has some bars about not letting the enemy do that
Sun Tzu actually says explicitly to not do that to your enemies, even if you have the opportunity.