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.
Christ, what a miserable state of affairs. Assad has always been a piece of shit, but I cannnot imagine how awful things are going to get once again in Syria without his regime at least nominally committed to multiethnic harmony. And the Axis of Resistance? What a joke tbh, I'm almost glad Nasrallah isn't here to see this. Iran is just watching all its pieces wiped from the board, for what? Some vague hope that Trump of all people is going to dial back sanctions? Disgusting. I hope I'm wrong, but grim days seem to be ahead.
I still think (1 year later), that hezbollah and iran should have been much more forceful when nazis started to ground invade gaza, show you are willing to sacrifice and there is a chance of victory, instead of meh-meh we respond to response to response. Wasn't there news that iraqi hezbollah wanted to go to fight to lebanon, and they told them no? The larger issue hasn't started with new leadership in both cases, but rather slow escalation at the start. Fly drones into airstrips. explode tankers in mediterranean, shit on erdogan openly and forcefully, call him whatever name on earth
Iran can make nukes in a matter of weeks if need be, why the fuck are they still being so wishy washy with it.
Cause it's antithetical to Islamic practice? Afaik that's been the reason the whole time. If the people in decision making positions are really Shia then Khomeini's fatwa was pretty iron clad.
Most likely because Iran will fall to chaos just as fast as Syria has. It's an old decaying regime that is led by an ancient husk that picks fights with any reformist.
Syria is a great case study of. Hey let's fix this shit as fast as possible. You really shouldn't just let decay set in and rot for years.
Russia is really a joke. They have gone their historical route of fighting Ukraine through attrition. And it's looking like it's costing them what few global out posts they have
Russia never had the military capacity to commit to a full blown assault in the first place, and it would have cost them far higher casualties (including magnitudes order higher of civilian casualties) if they had done that.
That’s why they had to rely on Wagner and Prigozhin to take Bakhmut while the Russian armed forces were reconstituted behind the frontlines and ramping up their military industrial capacity. The Russian army really only reached a formidable fighting strength by late 2023.
The Iranian government came about because of a popular revolution. The Ba'athisr regime came about because of a military coup. I think that inherently leaves it in a stronger position than Assad would be, but it's big weakness is that its eroded its base of popular support by educating and developing the country. It's created more of the kinds of people who wanted secular leftist revolution in the seventies. The best critique of Iran I heard was that they've done an incredible job educating women, but they place restrictions on women that no educated woman can accept.
45 years ago. And an entrenched supreme leader that undermines every reformist president voted in. I don't follow iran close but my guess is that the societal pressure release valve hasn't been allowed to vent off pressure for quite some time do to a geriatric leader. True anon touched about the new reformist president that died. It's kinda a maybe the supreme leader did it or maybe Israel did or just incompetence. If they can't even navigate a high ranking official safely in there own country than that should speak volumes.
Many on the left thought assad was some brilliant leader or something. We also think that Iran is some type of power house. The reality is that Syria wasn't just fragile it had already collapsed, no one had bothered to push the issue, just a little push and poof. Is iran the same way? With how tepid the resistance has been to Israeli aggression leads me to believe they are much weaker than most realize but they probably understand it.
I don't think they could be doing it that much faster right now. Too many cities, terrain, weather etc, you can only fit so many troops on the front, more doesn't equal better etc.
What is bad though is the historical mistake of going into Ukraine with kids gloves and the whole Special Military Operation shit instead of a real invasion. Of course they were afraid of NATO and their neoliberal shitheads also believed the sanctions would work(both sides did).
They were cautious and it almost worked, but they retreated a few times well before the referendum. Then they did that stupid silly referendum for whatever silly political reason and then the rational command was forced to realize they had to actually mobilize because the militias weren't going to cut it. Surovikin was a "hero" out of circumstance not as some sort of genius 4d shit.
Maybe a full war would have led NATO to respond and WW3, maybe not, either way it was a historical mistake they'll pay for.
They should of just pushed to kiev on the initial invasion. They got cold feet or actually found them selves logistically not able to do it and are paying for it.
You're right they pushed in from Belarus and sat around outside Kiev for god knows how long because they didn't want to destroy the civilian infrastructure(so the narrative goes) and we praised them for it.
They just didn't invest the manpower, it would have taken 50-100k just for Kiev alone while instead they put only like ~150k for the entire war.
And now look at them destroying the civilian infrastructure. I believe there was also the news that peace talks where going to happen. Either way a country like Ukraine probably could of been decapitated with their capital city occupied. Either way. Should a could a would a
And of course, the only reason Russia is managing to replenish it's losses is because they're doing like 10% of war communism for vital industries, uralvagonzavod is hard carrying the war effort. Stalin would say I told you so if it wasn't so sad.