Image is of one of the six salvos of the Oreshnik missile striking Ukraine.
The Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic missile that appears to split into six groups of six submunitions as it strikes its target, giving it the appearance of a hazel flower. It can travel at ten times the speed of sound, and cannot be intercepted by any known Western air defense system, and thus Russia can strike and conventionally destroy any target anywhere in Europe within 20 minutes. Two weeks ago, Russia used the Oreshnik to strike the Yuzhmash factory in Ukraine, particularly its underground facilities, in which ballistic missiles are produced.
Despite the destruction caused by the missile, and its demonstration of Russian missile supremacy over the imperial core, various warmongering Western countries have advocated for further reprisals against Russia, with Ukraine authorized by the US to continue strikes. Additionally, the recent upsurge of the fighting in Syria is no doubt connected to trying to stretch Russia thin, as well as attempting to isolate Hezbollah and Palestine from Iran; how successful this will have ended up being will depend on the outcome of the Russia and Syrian counteroffensive. Looking at recent military history, it will take many months for the Russians and Syrians to retake a city that was lost in about 48 hours.
Even in the worst case scenario for Hezbollah, it's notable that Ansarallah has had major success despite being physically cut off from the rest of the Resistance and under a blockade, and it has defeated the US Navy in its attempts to open up the strait. Israel has confirmed now that their army cannot even make significant territorial gains versus a post-Nasrallah, post-pager terrorist attack Hezbollah holding back its missile strike capabilities. In 2006, it also could not defeat a much less well-armed Hezbollah and was forced to retreat from Lebanon.
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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 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.
Its interesting observing Libs outside of the news mega bubble here. Someone unironically thought
will be able to trade Kursk for all of the annexed territories including Crimea as part of ending the conflict.
Update: I replied with a “Wow that’s crazy, how far into Russia are they now?” so we’ll see what they’re actually thinking.
Is that closer to Moscow or Saint Petersburg?
Because libs don't know geography and are high on copium. Every time you see "Kursk" they mean "Sudzha" a town of ~6000 including the neighboring villages.
Kursk was always a Western Propaganda play to keep Ukraine in the headlines so that Western support doesn't fall off a cliff. If there's one thing Zelenskyy knows is that Americans don't like a loser. That's why they don't publish the actual statistics of the war dead.
Makes more sense than any military benefit I've tried to think of. A nuclear powerplant play doesn't help much (it just pushes Russia towards a nuclear response and turns people against you for said escalation), and actual buffer/distraction ploys are clearly not working.
Maybe it was their version of a Tet offensive, only doing that with a mildly popular (at best) demoralised conscription military isn't going to have the same effects it did in Vietnam.
It's because they only read the headlines and think they've actually occupied the city of Kursk and not just some towns.
I saw this today on a western MSM outlet:
Headline: Russian Troops Are Withdrawing
Article: Russia is rotating an unreported number of frontline troops to undergo training.
Libs have no awareness of reality. Everything they believe is based on an illusory schema constructed out of NYT headlines
Kursk is like a 100 potato fields and kursk city- it aint shit and russia can flank it when they liberated donbass anyways.
They haven't even captured kursk city, or any other big city for that matter. They keep taking pictures at that pyaterovka store because that is the greatest achievement of this operation. SAD!
never said that - I was talking about the Kursk Oblast in general.
Update 2: Nobody has a response to “wow that’s crazy…”
Russia has captured over 3 times the amount of territory in Pokrovsk that Ukraine currently holds in Kursk (1600sqkm vs 500sqkm) since September, and Russia has reduced Ukraine's control over Kursk by half (from 1000sqkm to 500sqkm). So how is that supposed to work?
You mean on Hexbear?! My Hexbear?!
No these are “dogs of the us empire” in that Chinese meme.
Somehow I just thought this was absolutely appropriate. One of the best ever imo. Basicaly the entire war can be summarized by this.
I'm guessing Zelensky was really gunning on rushing the nuclear power plant or something because it makes no sense just sitting in Sudzha and eating a bunch of Kinzhals/FABs/Iskanders/Gerans for the foreseeable.
I guess they could threaten to launch an ATACMs over there but at this point they have the range to hit the NPP from within Ukrainian territory. The only military benefit is that it's drawing fire from the rest of the front (marginal) or that it's at least a buffer near a front that was starting to see some probing attacks over the border (Kharkiv).
Whatever it was, the worst possible option is standing still and facing a fuck load of attrition. Either do the weird gamble attack or fall back to an actually defensible position. Doing nothing kills men, burns equipment, and looks stupid.