Shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia:
The Soledar Salt Mines (also called Artyomsol Salt Mines after the State Enterprise Association Artyomsol that operates the mines) are located in the city/suburb of Soledar in the Bakhmut municipality in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. The scale of the mines is vast. The mines have 125 miles of tunnel, are at a depth of 288m, and many of the chambers are 30 meters in height, The largest resembles a hangar of about 100 meters long and 40 meters width and 40 m height, and has accommodated soccer matches and the inflation of a hot air balloon.
On the 5th of January, 2023, the Wagner Group and Russian Armed Forces took parts of Soledar's east, forcing the Armed Forces of Ukraine to step back and take up defenses further west and in the central parts of Soledar. The salt mine has since become a critical point for Ukrainian defense of Soledar and Bakhmut, utilizing the deep tunnels of the salt mine to maintain a defensive line in Soledar, as well as to keep stockpiles of supplies and launch attacks on Russian positions from their rear.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
January 9th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 10th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 11th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 13th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 14th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
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 fairly brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. The Duran, of which he co-hosts, is where the chuddery really begins to spill out.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ Now rebranded as Battlefield Insights, they do infrequent posts on the conflict.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it's a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of the really big pro-Russian (except when they're being pessismistic, which is often) telegram channels focussing on the war. Russian language.
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
Any Western media outlet that is even vaguely liberal (and quite a few conservative ones too).
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.
Last week's discussion post.
I just realized, in nearly a year of war, not once have I seen a western media outlet pose the question "what do the people of Eastern Ukraine / DPR / LPR want for themselves? Did they even want to be a part of Ukraine before all this?" For good or bad, I think Americans tend to be broadly sympathetic to secessionist movements (Europeans less so). I don't actually know for sure, I would speculate that most folks in the DPR/LPR wanted their rights respected at the very least if not actual secession. But that wasn't happening, Kiev was just shelling the fuck out of them instead.
The argument I would make is, the people of the DPR/LPR were having their basic rights being violated by their own government in Ukraine for years before this war. When you are in that situation, secession is clearly justified, I think that's a standard most people would agree with regardless of ideology. Maybe the method is questionable, but it's clear to me the people of DPR/LPR are now better protected and probably (but tell me if I'm wrong) now have the government they prefer. I guess those referendums prove my point but I'm more curious about attitudes and opinions before the war.
Of course, this is where western libs say "but those referendums in Crimea and the DPR/LPR were rigged by PUTLER!" OK fine, let's say that's true. Have you talked to people there? Do you know if they would actually prefer to be part of Ukraine or not?
It's just weird how so many people in the west tend to view secession as a sort of human right - at least if it's for the "right" reasons. But in places like Crimea or the DPR/LPR? Nope! Those places must be part of Ukraine whether the people there want it or not.
Libs are forcing this into a colonial lens.
They don’t know the ethnic history of the region but they do know where the line on the map is and so they assume that the presence of ethnic Russians within the nation of Ukraine is evidence of colonialism and ethnic cleansing.
This simple assumption that the legal border is synonymous with the ethnic border gets mixed up with the fact the word “Holodomor” sounds a bit like “Holocaust” and, well, those words sound similar to each other that if you even just think anymore about the topic then you’re a genocide denying Nazi Stalinist.
Having bravely shouted down anyone who brings facts to this conversation, this anti-colonial lens is then used to justify efforts to impose Ukrainianization measures and the right of self-determination of the people who actually live there has been completely discarded because even the right of those people to exist there has been delegitimized.
This is the big brain lib brained “leftist” justification for turning Ukraine into a neoliberal state where cultural rights are denied to the biggest minority group, the state intervened in religious worship to harass unwanted religions into obedience, political parties representing almost half the voting public have been banned and proscribed… it’s NATO’s contribution to anti-colonialism.
And of course, people who are actual anti-colonialists recognize that, even if a people group were placed in a colony by the colonizers, removing them is most definitely NOT "de-colonization" but ethno-statism.
I mean, it’s nothing new.
“Blood and soil” ideologies are always this revanchist, based on victimhood nationalist mythologies.
That’s all this is, except Timothy Snyder couched blood and soil in terms of anti-colonialism.
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:funny-clown-hammer:
I mean there was a :reddit-logo: post in what I think is a default sub about a CNN video from 2015 that went into detail about the legitimate grievances of people in Donbas. The overall opinion was that CNN was doing Russian propaganda. I find people I know IRL much more open to listening, so maybe it's just a redditor thing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/interesting/comments/1040rf3/cnn_in_2015_reporting_on_the_indiscriminate/
I was unable to post links from Human Rights Watch articles about Ukraine violating these people's language rights because of the "spam filter".
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Not a single person in my main friend group that have said they support Ukraine have even heard the word Donbas. It's piss easy to get people to just go with the mainstream narrative and not even consider asking questions as an answer.
I think it's more because most western media know that it'd be too hard to get the kind of footage that they'd want, what the people want is irrelevant you can always find someone that'll say what you want. We got tons of examples like "Venezuela/Cuba yearns for freedom" "The people want this strongman dictator gone" "Americans don't want healthcare only brocialists do".
Imo the problem is the west and western media have been so antagonistic that no one is going to talk to them anymore. Think it's similar to that one video of football fans walking away from the Israeli TV guys during the world cup.
No, they have been consistent that it was RUssian Meddling and Russian mercenaries that started the Donbass rebellions. Well that was the message before 2022, since February you're right nobody even considers the Donbass.
Those people are usually refereed to as "Russian-backed separatists" when western media bothers to refer to them at all.
My impression is that they were largely fine with being part of Ukraine prior to the 2014 coup, they weren't like Crimea. In the lead up to the coup things became more polarized with events like the Odessa massacre. Then the coup removed the president they voted for and right-wingers started threatening cultural repression and Kiev started using fascist paramilitaries as 'peacekeeping' forces. It's hard to get actual percentages for obvious reasons so this is based mostly on internet vibes from telegram and forums.