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.
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.