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.
From what I understand I'm going to try to spitball some possible scenarios for the future in Syria, I'm not gonna bother attributing probabilities to them cos fuck if I know.
This is all based on the assumption that the rebel and oppositions groups are not 100% beholden to US/Israel interests, the guy they had on Radio War Nerd stated that this offensive was most likely a rebel initiative, and that their backers in Turkey were not itching to depose Assad immediately.
-Islamist rebels and opposition groups manage to stabilize the country, islamists make some deal with the kurds so they don't have to fight
-Rebels attempt to break into kurd territory (civil war)
-Infighting among rebel groups escalates (civil war)
-Israel and turkey say fuck it and both annex whatever chunk of syrian land they want
-Rebels make some type of deal with Iran, for example allowing the land bridge to lebanon to continue in exchance for non-interference
-Rebels keep their sectarianism and al-qaeda past in check and don't commit many serious massacres or sectarian discrimination
-Rebels are literally al-qaeda in syria and commit many serious massacres and sectarian discrimination
-Assad is still alive and does government in exile, either gets abandoned by every ally as they recognize the rebel government or doesn't, no in-between.
-Rebels do 9/11 for russia or iran as reprisal for backing assad.
-Iraq scenario: Unstable and impoverished country that nevertheless manages to keep civil war at bay, becomes political battle ground for american and iranian proxies
-Afghanistan scenario: Rebel government is left mostly alone but is too politically unseemly to be fully integrated into the "rules based order"
-Libya scenario: Eventually another civil war
-New scenario: Syria becomes a total US/Israel proxy
If anyone want to add to this be my guest
If Israel or Turkey invades it and interfers too much with the new goverment, I think some of the terrorist groups will get angry enough to attack them. And they will get support from Iran and Russia.
I believe the country will fall into civil-war again. If Iran or Russia establish a client state around the coast, I doubt it will be Assad who will lead it, at least for now most people hate him, but as the situation gets bad, I can see him attempting to return to power like Gaddafi's family and loyalists.
I don't think its impossible Russia actually cuts a deal with HTS to continue the previous security arrangement, cursed as that will look. We see the obvious hand of Turkey, US and Ukraine now, but Islamists have been fickle partners for them in the past (and vice versa)
Russia is already a pariah for half the world, so they could go further than the west with supporting a internationally recognized terrorist group and even offer HTS state recognition. And HTS already has plenty of Russian equipment (thank you SAA). Paying off the terrorists so they attack somone else has happened before.
Though it is going depend heavily on how stable the new regime is I think, if it falls into chaos and infighting Russia is more likely to just keep occupying the coast, maybe make a funny local puppet government. If not, well, realpolitik can overcome a lot.