Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is still Palestine, though we will switch next week to a new country.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The weekly (biweekly?) update is here.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
Also a piece by our boy Bhadrakumar over the weekend: Biden gives booster dose to the faltering Ukraine war. He comes down rather pessimistically on the Ukraine War for Russia. He says that the war in Israel has essentially injected new life into the "democracy vs autocracy" conflict, with Biden pretty explicitly saying that both Russia and Hamas are threats to democracy and thus in some way part of the same axis. Poland's electoral changes do not herald any changes in their support for Ukraine, and Sunak eventually losing to Starmer in the UK also will change nothing.
Essentially, he says that the post-counteroffensive wobbling has been mitigated, and everybody continues to be all-in for the war, including large amounts of funding to keep the Ukrainian economy going. He says that the advantage that ATACMS gives Ukraine is meaningful, and so too might be the supply of Gripen planes, which can operate from narrower, shorter runways including highways, thus meaning that airbases need not be used. The United States has said that the White House is still going to deliver new and increasingly advanced weapons systems in the coming months (which are still under production).
Personally, I think this is much too pessimistic and if Israel is caught in a long hot war and the US is forced to supply large amounts of weapons to Israel and the US military bases in the Middle East then Ukraine will naturally receive less stuff, but nonetheless it appears that Ukraine's economy will not be the factor that causes the eventual collapse, due to all the funding. It'll be either the equipment running dry, or the lack of trained men. Given Russia's ability to adapt to new weapons systems used against them, I also think that the ATACMS will eventually be mitigated, as will whatever planes the West sends - the Russian military only continues to grow in power as best as I can see. Regardless of what happens, looks like the war is definitely still on for 2024 - any chance that the US might walk away with its tail between its legs and do the classic move of abandoning its ally as it loses, that possibility has been squashed for now.
ATACMS are short range almost hypersonic missiles (they steer at Mach 3+ to avoid interception, hypersonics start at over Mach 5), they're going to be almost impossible to intercept. Much more difficult than the storm shadows because of their speed. If ATACMS was actually hypersonic, it would be straight up impossible with current technology.
The Gripen is also actually a good fighter plane made by Sweden and not some kind of US military industrial complex grift, the Gripen has the capabilities of a fighter jet actually built to challenge Soviet military doctrine (small and agile, delta wing design allows for excellent flight energy management in a turn fight, short take offs and landings, can handle imperfect runways or airfields with debris and bumps, easy to update electronics that allow for the use of air to air missiles with a range over 320km/200 miles, or allows you to use your own missiles, like South Africa with the darter missiles on their Gripens). I don't think that Ukraine will get Gripen jets though. I think that's posturing.
3 out of 6 ATACMS missiles were shot down during the attack on Berdyansk airport. An ammunition depot was hit and a few helicopters damaged.
There is no way that ATACMS can change the equation. In order to defeat Russia, Ukraine/NATO needs to be able to destroy/deplete Russia’s munitions and equipments faster than they can replace them. It’s an industrial war, and productive capacity will determine the outcome of the game.