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.
That comment you are alluding to kind of sent me off the rails tbh. I kind of hate all the people here acting like it doesn’t matter if Syria falls and Assad is a corrupt dictator or whatever. Jesus Christ such small minds and short sights. The axis of resistance must stick together and it must prevail. Defeats of segments of the axis is extremely serious and bad, I hate the aloof attitude of “who cares man he’s a reactionary” from leftists.
It's a reaction they are having to a catastrophic situation to defend their own psychology, they are pre-emptively separating themselves from the Syrian government so they are less devastated if/when it falls. Not the type of attributes I hope to see in my allies tbh, cutting and running when things get bad to preserve their sense of selves.
As someone that's been following the situation in Syria since 2011, this is just straight up devastating. I've just run out of words. I still remember August 2015 and how desperate it was, and then to be glad that Russia finally intervened at the end of September 2015. I didn't even know it happened until October because I didn't have internet or TV access for the whole month. Now it's just... It all feels hollow.
Russia's intervention and the Syrian Civil War is possibly one of the biggest political influences on me, and the main reason I had a very strong pro-Russia position when the Ukrainian conflict escalated in 2022. It was miraculous and it was the first time the western proxies were defeated in the field in quite a long time, since at least the Vietnam War. It was the turning point where things stopped getting worse and started getting better. Thank god we didn't have another Libya, I thought to myself.
To see it all undone, decades of work and sacrifice, the death of so many martyrs, in such a short timeframe is heartbreaking. And to see people on here act like it's no big deal or be in denial of it is sad. This is an extremely big deal and extremely bad. We've witnessed Israeli genocide for a year straight and people just non-chalantly shrug when Israel's primary enemies in the region are faltering. WTF?! Are they completely ignorant or do they really not give a single fuck about Palestine? We are getting not just 1 more Libya, the whole fucking shia and non-sunni/jewish middle east is going to become Libya-fied. It's unbelievable and terrible.
Yeah seeing Putin announce that he would being bombing ISIS oil trucks after Turkey shot down a Russian Su-24 was a big turning point geopolitically. It was a signal that Russia was not taking this lightly, that they were going to bomb the western proxies' source of funding directly. No more tip toeing around the issue.
I really think that a lot of USA citizens and/or westerners struggle to grasp how bad this is and can get in terms of ethnic divide, and it comes down to the way race, along with ethno cultural groups, are seen in mainstream society there. I know you've gotten into extensive arguments over that very topic in the past on this website. I wrote a comment on it in this thread somewhere. For all the faults of the Assad government, he at least tried to create a secular state and mitigate this issue. That is something that is incredibly difficult to do (even in a country that is considered "racially homogeneous" by USA/western definitions) and can easily fall apart into indescribable barbarism.
To me it almost feels akin to the collapse of the soviet union, at a smaller scale of course but the same dynamics. The old government had become stale and corrupt, and the people became apathetic and "tired" and just kind of gave up. They thought that when this happened they would just become a western Liberal Democracy and stay as a union, nobody foresaw the widespread looting and destruction that would follow. The untold misery. The tens of millions of deaths and destroyed lives. The decades of reactionary trends that would spring up in its wake. The fascist resurgence and black terror.
You had western "leftists" shrugging their shoulders at the collapse of the USSR, or even cheering it on, as it was "no true socialism".
Just a profoundly sad situation all around.
Normal people are unable to grasp the psychopathy and barbarity of imperialists. They are unable to grasp the interconnectivity of the global class struggle. They think they will be treated with respect and humanity as they fold their cards and admit defeat, only to be slaughtered and looted and r*ped. ISIS taking over a country isn't just a "whatever" thing, it's world historically bad.
I'm so fearful that the scenario you described in the first paragraph could happen in South Africa with the inevitable decline of the ANC (political party of Nelson Mandela, that liberated us from apartheid). It seems like a general trend that imperialists exploit for their own gains. That's why anti corruption purges, like what Xi did in China, and what is currently happening in Vietnam, are so important.
It's just a very sad outcome of revolutions in one country. Without a global revolution every single revolution will eventually putter out of steam and eventually collapse. This is why China cannot just sit idly by "until it wins by doing nothing". Global revolutions is essential to their own personal revolution being sustained. The USSR knew this and at least attempted to bring it about for some time - and once they withdrew to their own borders and stopped supporting the Chinese it was the beginning of the end.
Hell, you have people here talk about how good it was for the PRC to 'crush' the USSR.
Is this happening here somewhere? Where are the receipts? I watch these threads pretty carefully and I haven't seen the kind of sentiment you're asserting exists in numbers.
It's in this thread but also widespread on this website and throughout the western left more generally. People have always been dismissive of Russia/Iran/Assad faction in Syria, calling them just another faction in a sea of factions instead of taking the correct anti-imperialist line. They also generally are more favorable to the SDF/YPG even though they host Americans and release ISIS prisoners to do offenses against the Syrians, and steal Syrian oil so that they can't even run their own tanks.
People do not have the appropriate stance of revolutionary defeatism and anti-imperialism, it just bugs me how blase people are about millions of people in Syria now under ISIS rule like it's a lateral move and like the struggle for Palestine will not be negatively impacted by this, to the point of logistical collapse. This is a massive victory for zionists and imperialists, HTS won't just be chill there's an explicit purpose to why this is happening right now.
It's not due to Assad's "corruption" that he collapsed, if corruption caused collapse then Ukraine wouldn't have withstood years of brutal grinding war. Assad's government was lacking resources and territory, it lacked economic development, it believed that Russia-Turkey would uphold the 2020 ceasefire so it focused too heavily on civilian rebuilding instead of continued defense. They had no oil because all their oil production was occupied by American-backed Kurds stealing it. They had no money because they couldn't collect taxes because they couldn't actually control large sections of the country and they were under severe sanctions. I hate this victim blaming shit where it's Syria's fault this is happening to them, Russia and Iran need to be criticized for their general inaction and lack of putting their money where their mouths were. Iran baited Hezbollah, Ansarallah and Hamas into greater conflict and then balked themselves and let others pay the price. Russia forced Assad not to do an Idlib offensive and refused to bomb the Turk occupiers, they forced Assad's government into a position where it was disunified and unable to function because the nation was frozen in a broken and occupied state. They shouldn't have led the others to the point of destruction if they weren't willing to fight alongside them.
Examples Here:
https://hexbear.net/comment/5709530
https://hexbear.net/post/4021802/5709814
https://hexbear.net/comment/5685484
you've linked to one person with a poor take. largepenis correctly describes the situation as a disaster. and yeah no shit the 'western left more generally' sucks. you're correct to disagree with parzivus in that one take (obviously the HTS are US aligned) but it's ridiculous to take literally one person's bad post and extrapolate it to make it so that you are the one true newsmega poster. don't conflate what you're reading on the internet at large with what is going on here in this thread and in this community. be constructive instead of wildly hyperbolizing in a self serving way.
self-serving? I just don't want to hear people shitting on the Syrians at this moment, I want to see some fucking solidarity and also serious analysis, not wishcasting on the other end of the spectrum. This was just a couple examples off the top of my head from the last day or so, and I didn't realize my 2 different conversations were with the same user until I went back and linked em.
You call me hyperbolic, but I'm attempting to thread the needle of correctly describing the situation and its urgency while still holding solidarity for Syrians. Some people either want to believe it is all perfectly fine, or they are shitting all over Assad for being a corrupt evil dictator idiot and the SAA for being cowards. Why does it have to be either of these extremes? I think it's extremely tragic and won't be making jokes about it, and I will also honor the martyrs and those who fought for 15 years. I think this needs to be handled with seriousness and find some of the general tone here too glib. People making jokes and stuff at the expense of Syrians, where Syrians are the butt of the criticism.
Isn't the inaction of Russia and Iran precisely proof that these bourgeois governments are more driven by their own interests than by principled anti-imperialism? This seems deeper to me than a strategic mistake. They are not stupid and they have powerful capabilities. What they also have are their own bourgeois and national interests.
I think there is a persistent false dichotomy among communists between the "Western left" position that all these powers are imperialist and so equally bad and undeserving of support, and the self-styled anti-imperialist position that only the Western bloc is imperialist and so its opponents are necessarily anti-imperialist. These opponents are playing a counterhegemomic role and still they aspire to imperialism or at the very least to their own capitalist development (IMO the latter necessarily implies the former, that's Marxism). It's not an either/or.
Russia and Iran simply will not self-sacrifice to the extent of the DPRK, Cuba, or currently the Yemenis. Why would these powers be consistent anti-imperialists when their system is built to sell out? Following bourgeois interests is the same reason Russia began to fight NATO in Ukraine in 2022 instead of 2014. Back then it was preferable to sell oil to Westerners than to fight imperialism.
It is true that Russia, Iran, & Syria under Assad are better than the alternative. I agree that it has been right to critically support them. This situation is an absolute disaster; Syria is on track for an Afghanistan/Libya style nightmare, and this is the clearest victory for Israel and its backers in over a year. But they are not communists and that is a clear reason why they act the way they do.
In my view, Russia intervened in Syria in 2015 because they wanted to maintain a partner in an increasingly Western-dominated Southwest Asia, they wanted the use of their ports, and they wanted the Syrian market to be more amenable to Russian than Western capital and weapons exports. They perceived the benefits as worth the costs. Now supporting Assad and the like would be good money following bad, so they won't do it. It is self-serving in the same way their betrayal of Armenia was. Let's not forget their historically close relationship with Israel either.
Bourgeois powers can be worthy of support over other bourgeois powers in a particular context, but that should not cloud our judgment to the point we are surprised when they do not give up capitalist development for the cause. In the case of Assad, part of the reason the war began in the first place was his government's neoliberal privatizations leading to mass popular discontent, which, as you know very well, the West promptly took advantage of to further destabilize and to promote Salafist insanity. (That is not incompatible with the Syrian government having no good options after the imperialist war began. I agree there's little they could have done past that pivot point; that should not be the focus of criticism.)
As an aside, this false dichotomy plays into the ridiculous turf war on this site between "doomers"/"bloomers". We need to break out of black and white thinking in general.