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.
Do we even know what Venezuela was sent?
This is all speculation, but I could see the Russians and Chinese being willing to give Iran more advanced weapons than Venezuela given the geographical and industrial relevance of Iran for both countries, relative to Venezuela.
the only hard evidence was some mandarin on the crates of small arms being distributed to militias
Venezuela had an S-300VM/SA-23 Gladiator/Giant battalion of two batteries, a Buk-M2E/SA-17 Grizzly brigade, and Chinese "anti stealth" radars (JY-27A Wide Mat), and Su-30 fighter jets. This was all equipment that Venezuela had purchased beforehand under Chavez and Maduro from Russia and China and proudly showed off at military parades, so we know they had them. That is the no fly zone created using a limited amount of first and second tier air defence systems option. It didn't work. A lot more would need to be deployed to deter the USA.
As for more advanced weapons, the S-300VM is the most expensive air defence system Russia has ever exported on a per battery/fire unit cost basis, more expensive than even the S-400. It entered Russian service in 2012. The Buk-M2 entered Russian service in 2008. These are all relatively modern variants. Russia has the S-300V4 now and the Buk-M3, but they have not been exported. The difference between the S-300VM and V4 is very slight, mainly to do with the maximum range of the 9A82M missile, 250km vs 400km, which is relevant with regards to long range kill chains when networking with other systems like the Buk (also known as "any sensor, best shooter" in western military doctrine), which is also a potential reason why the USA destroyed the Buk command post in Venezuela, to prevent such a scenario:
The difference between Buk M2 and M3 is significant in that a new missile is introduced with a 50% increase the magazine capacity per TELAR (4 vs 6) and 100% increase per TEL (6 vs 12), along with significantly increased range (around 50%) in a relevant combat scenario (45-50km vs 70km). All Russian units have been modernised to S-300V4, as the difference is minor, but there are still plenty of Russian units using Buk M2, Buk M3 is very new and a bigger difference. So on Russia's end, there's little they can do as far as delivering more advanced equipment, they'd have to increase the number of systems delivered. Venezuela had advanced systems, but limited in number.
As for China, they could switch to exporting air defence systems instead of just search radars in such a scenario. A lot more flexibility there. But again, unless Chinese air defence systems are eons ahead of Russian ones, they'd need to supply a high number of advanced systems networked with each other, not some limited force. Limited forces appear to be very vulnerable right now. In China's case, the limited amount of advanced air defence systems, along with the fighter jets they sold to Pakistan, were able to shoot down a few Indian Air Force aircraft on the first attack. But when India switched to stand off strikes on the second attack, the Pakistani air defences were unable to deal with the multilayered Indian attack, involving supersonic cruise missiles, air launched ballistic missiles, and subsonic stealthy cruise missiles, with zero Indian Air Force aircraft shot down. Pakistan ultimately won the first battle, but lost the "war", as the results of the second battle, if they continued, would be unsustainable from a Pakistani perspective.
Also in both cases, how much does this cost? High numbers of advanced systems are very expensive for US adversaries to purchase. China and Russia are not going to donate these systems. Based on current evidence, the days of buying a couple of double digit SA systems to deter limited US military action are over, a lot more is needed to stop a squadron of F-35s and EA-18Gs from disabling the air defence systems.