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.
in our next episode of "Western militaries/MIC just saying shit" https://archive.ph/sjHJB
yeah, so this vehicle for which we have a yearly production rate of (maybe) 200, for which we have produced a little over 2K (and I think that number's counting vehicles which still haven't come off the assembly line, it's total orders, some of which haven't been fulfilled yet) over the course of sixteen years? we'll make a bajilion of 'em, don't worry. we'll even do it in a country with rising energy costs and a contracting manufacturing sector!
more
The US, btw, has produced a little under 5k of the Stryker, a much cheaper and less sophisticated 8x8 APC (although it gets a lot pricier in its modern IFV variants, but so does the Boxer, and most Boxers seem to be the basic APC variant or other mostly unarmed configurations anyway, which ought to be on the cheaper end). But yeah, the Germans are going to get 5k of these and the manufacturer's going to be pumping out 1k yearly, for... which clients exactly, given that up until now the averaged out yearly sales have been like 130?
even China has only made 3-4k of their IFV (the ZBD-04) what the hell does Germany need 5000 of 'em for
tbf, the Boxer is a pretty wide family of vehicles, so it includes both APC and IFV variants (as well as a whole bunch of other stuff, like engineering vehicles, mortar carriers, artillery, recovery vehicles, SPAAGs...). It's more comparable to the ZBL-08, which similarly has many variants, and sits at 6K+ (and is a much lighter and more economical vehicle).
But even still, 5K is a ridiculous number. West Germany, during a much more militarily tense period, had around 2.1K tracked IFVs and 1K wheeled APCs, supplemented by 4K M113s (which I think they imported from the Americans rather than produced under license, and probably for pretty favorable prices given how the yanks were handing out 113s like candy). An now they're aiming for maybe up to 600 Pumas (one of the fanciest and most expensive modern IFVs) plus all these Boxers, and tanks, and a whole bunch of other stuff. And all this as their economy is shrinking, especially in the manufacturing sector that's supposed to actually produce all this shit.
This is basically all of European rearmament, just governments saying "we've just put in an order for ONE BILLION TANKS"
and everyone clapping like seals at based Europe standing up to
and no one bothering to interrogate if any of this is even remotely financially feasible (or just, like, materially feasible, as in "even with an infinite money cheat, are there physically enough factories that this order could be fulfilled anytime this century?")
Boxer Rebellion II
Hyperscaler logic spreading to the rest of the economy
Tiny Maus
Western militaries nowadays be like
6 person start up in Amsterdam reveals new tank:
Damn for 8 million euro a pop that must be some great underwear