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 saw some people remarking it was "undefeated", which is a hilarious claim really.
For the last, what, half-century? the only actual battle testing that western weapons have gone through is against developing countries without anything close to the resources of a near-peer power. And the metric is basically "Can this be beaten by a militia armed with small arms fire, and maybe a few tanks from decades ago, and no anti-air capabilities nor combined-arms warfare?" And many of the West's weapons cannot even surpass that. Quantity is really making up for quality here, but it's almost entirely from reserves, not stuff actually being produced.
When I build the Hexbear-72 tank in my local scrapyard, I will advertise it as being undefeated also.
[106 years ago... France]
:stuff: They were defeated.
Join me in stormworks, bash something out.
They're going to find out (if they didn't know already, which... There's probably a line between military realists and political idealists wrt this decision) that western tank invincibility is from air supremacy and not putting the tanks in vulnerable situations, and very little do with the specific oddities of their design.