In June, large anti-government protests shook Kenya. President Ruto and his parliament were attempting to pass the new Finance Bill 2024, which, among other things, would have hiked taxes on the population, with a 16% sales tax on bread and a 25% duty on cooking oil, as well as new taxes on financial transanctions and vehicle ownership. There would also have been levies on women's sanitary products and digital goods such as phones, among other measures affecting hospitals.
Hundreds of protestors stormed the parliament building and began to tear the place apart. Shortly afterwards, on June 26th, Ruto announced that he was withdrawing the bill, calling the tens of deaths and hundreds of injuries "unfortunate". A couple weeks later, Ruto then fired his entire cabinet (aside from his foreign minister) and communicated his wish to the nation to form a "broad-based government". Funnily enough, in July, it was announced that the majority of positions were to be filled by members of the old cabinet, while other positions were taken by members of the opposition. This has prompted scepticism among the population, including calls to resign, but there haven't (yet) been any major anti-government events to pressure this outcome. The Communist Party of Kenya has been working to get some of their comrades back after they were abducted by the police during the protest period, and have otherwise supported the protests against Ruto.
The measures in the bill were strongly encouraged by the IMF. Kenya's debt is currently around $80 billion, of which about 10% is owed to China for infrastructure projects (such as a railway linking the capital, Nairobi, to the port city of Mombasa, as well as 11,000 kilometers of road throughout the country). The rest is owed to a combination of the US, IMF, World Bank, and Saudi Arabia. More than half of government revenue is going towards repaying the debt - but despite these massive payments, it has only grown. The most recent round of IMF plundering (and the impetus for current events) began in 2021, when they offered a 38-month programme to "help" Kenya, which would involve the usual warfare on the poor and the dismemberment of any useful societal institutions.
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 Kenya! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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.
There was speculation that a Ukrainian F-16 pilot was killed during the Russian air raids on Monday, here is confirmation from the US. I am unable to archive the article due to the website's bot detection, so I'll post the entirety of it below.
A Ukrainian F-16 fighter jet was destroyed in a crash on Monday, according to a U.S. official, just weeks after the first of the American-made aircraft arrived in Ukraine.
Initial reports indicate the jet wasn’t shot down by enemy fire, although the incident occurred during a massive Russian missile barrage across the country on Monday, the official said. Rather, the crash was likely a result of pilot error.
rest of the article, contains liberal cope
Ukraine used the jets for the first time in combat to shoot down Russian missiles during the strikes this week, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Ukrainian Air Force wouldn’t confirm the crash or the status of the pilot. The Pentagon referred questions to the Ukrainian Air Force for comment.
The news that one of Ukraine’s few F-16s has been destroyed is a major blow to Kyiv, which had pleaded for the jets for months before President Biden finally gave the green light for European countries to transfer the aircraft last year.
Kyiv hopes the advanced Western aircraft will give its forces an edge on the battlefield, particularly to shoot down incoming Russian missiles and help protect troops on the front lines. But they are also vulnerable to Russian air defense missiles and present a high-value target for Moscow’s forces.
Zelensky announced on Aug. 4 that the first of 80 promised F-16s had arrived in Ukraine. The Ukrainian air Force didn’t provide numbers, but a second U.S. official said a total of six aircraft had arrived and Ukraine has six pilots trained to fly them.
...
So that's now five F-16s left, and five (or four if the reports of the other F-16 pilot being killed are correct, Russian media reports striking two F-16s in a hangar in Western Ukraine) pilots left for Ukraine at the moment. And this is after just one sortie where the F-16s were used to intercept cruise missiles. The Ukrainian F-16s were not even exposed to enemy fire! I guess the pilots recieved inadequate training and were rushed to the defensive lines. Either that or Russia destroyed it while it was on the ground during the air raids. It was reported that Russia bombed one of the airfields where F-16 aircraft were suspected to be stationed at.
With how deep in Western Ukrainian territory the aircraft are suspected to be, I think a direct shoot down is unlikely. If Russia destroyed it, it was probably destroyed during the bombing raids while in a hangar or on a runway. Russian media is reporting that they struck two F-16s in a hangar in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. It's also possible that the F-16 got hit by sharpnel after shooting down a cruise missile, damaging it to the point of crashing. Something that has happened before to Ukraine.
2 years of training with the most veteran english speaking mig pilots, and they crash into a hill on their first sortie shooting shaheeds?
Edit: Reports now that he was short down by Patriot AA. A big advantage of using western equipment should be that they can use the better Mark XII IFF transponders, and avoid this sort of mistake even with minimal air defense coordination. It could still be a Soviet AA system for that reason.
I read an article by a fighter pilot who had the rare opportunity to fly both the F-16 and MiG-29 after the fall of the Berlin wall, and he said that it would probably be easier to teach a pilot to fly an F-16 from scratch than transfer from the MiG-29 to an F-16.