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.
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.