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.
If Assad's government can survive this, he needs to initiate an anti-corruption campaign on the scale of what the DPRK did during the Arduous March.
What he needs is more loyal and better trained troops (better paid, needs more resources) and better equipment. The “corruption” is the inability of his government to extract taxes from most of the population, having to rely heavily on external powers to do heavy lifting.
This is a hole he cannot dig himself out of without regaining much of the country and rebuilding the economy and consolidating the monopoly on violence. I don’t see how this stabilizes without full investment from Iran and Russia both, possibly with Chinese economic intervention as well.
Kind of fucked for everyone here to turn on him and call him “corrupt” when his nation has been under siege and sanction and invasion and occupation for a decade. Dude has a shit hand and is doing his best.
Better trained and more loyal troops yes I agree, but equipment wise I don't know what can be done when the SAA have over 50 T-72 and 5 T-90 tanks captured by the rebels undamaged. Those are some of the best tanks available to a country like Syria, or any country full stop. Russia uses very similar equipment in Ukraine. They are not going to get much better than that armour wise, it doesn't exist. At best they can get some T-80s to supplement their forces. In other areas yes better equipment can help, such as better tactical ballistic missiles and modern drone warfare units. But their armoured divisions are as good as it gets equipment wise, and they still took a large number of losses to rebel captures. To me, that's probably more of a tactical or training issue, than an equipment issue. The equipment wasn't even damaged in many of those cases.
I didn't call him corrupt, but he is running a corrupt system. The deterioration of the Syrian Military when it was so successful five years ago is shocking.
When it comes to military readiness there's no way around it. You have to spend money. You can purge your way through indiscipline, ie a scenario where the military leadership is not loyal to the government. It's dangerous, and painful, but some times it must be done. However, if you are in a scenario where officers are not paid enough then they'll straight up sell ammunition in the black market. Units can have all the equipment in the world, if they don't have the supplies then officers will pretend otherwise just so they keep getting paid and promoted. If the armed forces are under-supplied, then corruption is a fait accompli.
I am leaning towards the idea that Syria could not maintain military readiness because the Syrian State does not have access to the funds required. There is something else though. The US led decapitating strikes. Syria is bombed at least three times a week by the israelis and everything between Soleimani's assassination to Israel's genocidal campaigns across the region for the past few years have blunted what the Iranians are actually good at. Which is raising troops and providing them social cohesion. One of the first casualties in Aleppo was the iranian commander. Had he not been killed its possible the local SAA wouldn't have scrambled their way to losing the city.