Image is of a Russian missile impacting Ukraine.
As we rapidly approach the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the Ukraine War (an anniversary I absolutely did not expect would occur while the two sides were still in combat), we have seen Russia turn to a new strategy, starting late last year but intensifying in December and now January.
Russia seems intent to disconnect Ukrainian cities from the electrical grid by focussing bombing on thermal, gas, and hydro stations, causing major power blackouts across the country. Russia is also bombing substations relatively close to Ukraine's three nuclear power plants (Zaporzhye, the fourth, remains under Russia control), studiously avoiding hitting the premises of the NPPs themselves for obvious reasons. Even if they're far away from the NPPs, striking the substations does have risks, because if the nuclear reactors aren't shut off before the substations are bombed, there is a possibility that there will be insufficient backup power to prevent a meltdown - hence why Russia hasn't really attempted to do this for four years.
Most of the electricity generated in Ukraine comes from the nuclear power plants, both because of the infrastructure they had initially (Ukraine was 7th in the world in nuclear electricity generation before the war) and because Russia has bombed most non-nuclear power stations and substations already. Over the last couple weeks, we have seen Ukrainian media fly into a frenzy about long-lasting blackouts, especially in the middle of winter. After the Zionist entity destroyed virtually all civilian infrastructure in Gaza while the West cheered on, they now appear to have changed their mind on whether such strikes are an effective and humanitarian option to subject millions of people to.
Regardless of whether you personally believe these Russian strikes are justified (I'm pretty iffy myself), it must be stressed that Ukraine has been bombing Russian tankers and oil refineries and power stations for a long time now, so in a sense, this is a retaliation. It's also remarkable, compared to Western wars, that Ukraine was even still allowed to possess a functioning electrical grid for nearly four years into a war of this magnitude. That all being said, while Ukrainian strikes have been somewhat but not overly impactful on the Russian oil sector, the response is clearly very asymmetrical: Ukraine's power grid is, according to Ukrainian energy corporations, now 70% degraded and is virtually impossible to now repair, and blackouts can last most of the day.
For everybody's sake, I hope a ceasefire and peace deal will be reached soon. But after four years of seeing opportunities for an end to this war squandered over and over, I'm not holding my breath.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
This is the Spectator (cognitohazard warning) so take it with a giant grain of salt, but:
This reads as fanfiction to me, but there is clearly something going on with Xi's purging of the PLA's high command. Still way too early to know what (if anything) this means, or why this was done, but the rumour mill is certainly churning. That said, I was in Shanghai for the last two weeks and the vibes were totally normal. All this activity though right on the eve of the supposed 2027 date espoused by US intelligence as the cut off point for a favorable outcome for the United States in a war around Taiwan (analysis with imo is far too optimistic for the Americans, that date should've probably been something like 2020 at best) is rather... interesting. I was always of the opinion that China would never make an overt move for Taiwan, but the world has shifted dramatically in the last few years, and the room for military maneuver is wide. Both of the other two great powers (Russia and the US) have already done large scale military operations. Will China take advantage of that space and have their own Special Military Operation, as a treat? Still so much uncertainty, but I think the portends are signalling that sooner or later they will.
Per https://archive.ph/yJLjx
The newscomm has a policy to remove fake news, but this one is a real banger and there's some good comments in the subthread so I'll leave it up.
Please do not take this as a policy change. However, for others who may choose to post fake news, please allow at least two months for the comm's fake news ability cooldown to reset and also make sure any future fake news posted is at least as outlandish as this story.
Xi havana syndrome'd 100 men to death
I know that China is much better at controlling their domestic telecom infrastructure relative to many other countries, but a gun fight in the middle of Beijing in what is probably one of the most surveilled buildings by foreign intelligence in the country, and no word or video of it getting out until The Spectator published this story, seems implausible.
They also told us a huge genocide happened in western China, without a single picture being taken or any physical evidence left behind.
So I'm supposed to believe there was a straight up gunfight in a beijing hotel and nobody noticed
No you're supposed to believe the Chinese are so mind controlled and censored that everyone who heard it immediately forgot or was disappeared forever along with their family
Xi used the neuralizer
Think that's the plot of Battlefield 4 lol, but Shanghai
As we are in Hellworld ,the lazy propopopagandist could have used an AI that then fished the plot from Battlefield 4 (btw Kharg Island anybody ? Kharg Island ! oh and Paracel - they have an handle on geopolitics ) the pool ,as i used AI to give me option on Propagandist in an insulting manner.
spoiler
propagandasiorpropogandaddy
propagandaMAXlER
propogandussy
ropagangist
pro-poganda (he pogged too hard)
propagan-dad
propogandalf the white
propaganda.exe has stopped working
propogandriller
propargandhi (non-violent gaslighting arc)
propagoon
propogandalfini
propaganda
You did say to take this with a grain of salt but I feel that a gunfight involving a whole infantry company, in a government hotel, in Beijing would not remain within the realm of 'internet rumour' for very long. And if I was about to do a coup d'etat I'd have moved way more than just 100 soldiers to one location.
Yea ~~cops and militarydon't carry firearms in Beijing~~, at least what I've seen when I was there, there's no way there was a firefight in the middle of the capital without people noticing wtf lol.
This is the same thought process that JD vance had when he said Chinese people were peasants, pure racism and western supremacy
Maybe they all used silenced firearms and nobody noticed, like in videogames.
Silenced guns with the right set-up and ammo IRL are actually quieter than in movies/games. They don't even make the little "pew pew" noise, just clicks
"Must've been the wind."
-100,000 nearby office workers.
Oh shit you got me they got the quiet pew pew not the loud pew pew
Well the PAP do carry arms, but you won't see them at all outside of important places or high traffic touristy areas e.g. there are a handful of PAP around Tiananmen Square usually armed with Type-95s in very clearly marked armed police kiosks/vans. The article just feels like wishcasting though, like you're telling me the society where everyone has a smartphone didn't manage to get even one reliable recording/photo/anecdote about this out? Maybe they expect us to believe that Chinese internet censors are omnipotent?
Definitely armed police and military in certain places like outside some train stations. I remember some armed PLA members around the Bund in Shanghai
steamed hams but it's a coup attempt in china.
To be fair they did say it happened at the “Yingxi hotel” which does not exist, maybe it happened in another dimension.
Jesus they got the hotel name wrong?
It’s more impressive than that, they managed to get it wrong two different ways in the same paragraph
The battle happened entirely on the astral plane, at the conclusion of which the losing side all fell over dead simultaneously.
lmao do they been the Jingxi hotel? Never heard of a “Yingxi” in Beijing. Seems like the only candidate given that it is indeed in Western Beijing and is owned by the government and 京西 does indeed mean Western Beijing.
Spectator couldn’t even bother to have anybody proofread this. They clearly have zero respect for their own “reports” therefore I have none too.
Also I was in Beijing on January 18-19 and nobody was talking about a gunfight.
That's because anyone who mentions it is disappeared by the seeseepee, this entire gunfight was secret and hidden because...uhh, insidiousness?
The Speculator.
That story seems wildly improbable
would make for a cool Three Kingdoms scene though
Ah yes. Zhang Youxia failed to take into account that Xi had Zhu Geliang on his side, who was playing 5D chess all along and lured them all into a trap using straw replicas of PLA soldiers
Xi fooled Zhang Youxia into doing a coup by pretending to have a headache and a flu and then Zhu Geliang sent the Xiliang Wolf Warriors to recycle one of the 'and then their entire clan was executed' scenes
They’re calling it the Red Flag Wedding
Minor correction
*Zhuge Liang
Zhuge is a two-character name, like 夏侯 Xiahou or 司马 Sima
Oh cool thanks! I’d only ever seen it written in Chinese before lol. I didn’t realise it was a two character surname
I want to earn money this easy
Tangential, but we should have a :heavy-lifting: or a :reports-say: emote
Would be a good close cousin to
and 
I think this is the best article I've read on the subject of the CMC "purges" in English language media
It's written by a Taiwanese defence analyst, so there's some obvious bias. But the outline and motives make sense, and it involves using Chinese primary sources.
According to the article, it boils down to disagreements on force structure and joint operations training between different branches of the military. Xi's timeline for joint operations (2027) did not line up with Zhang's (2035) and there were disagreements on how to structure the military. Since the first training cycles are starting, the article argues that Xi purged the officials before the training programme could be finalised, and that we should expect more aggressive joint operations training between different branches of Chinese military going forward.
source: it came to me in a dream
I heard that the Dark PLA summoned Hanba in order to capture Xi Jinping and curse him to an eternity of unequenchable thirst buried in the silty bed of the Yangtze, but Xi rallied 10,000 loyal Party sorcerers who banished her before she could complete her wicked designs.
The Dark PLA only has until 2027 when Xi completes his Guan Yu Gundam and is able to liberate the Mao Gong ding currently stored in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, which will grant him youthful life for ten thousand years.