Image is of Assad and his family.
After less than two weeks of retreating with few shots fired and little resistance, the SAA has retreated into, well, a state of non-existence. This thereby ends a conflict that has been simmering for over a decade. With the end of this conflict, another begins: the carving up of what used to be Syria between Israel and Turkey, with perhaps the odd Syrian faction getting a rump state here and there. Both Israel and Turkey have begun military operations, with Israel working on expanding their territory in Syria and bombing military bases to ensure as little resistance as possible.
Israeli success in Syria is interesting to contrast against their failures in Gaza and Lebanon. A short time ago, Israel failed to make significant territorial progress in Lebanon due to Hezbollah’s resistance despite the heavy hits they had recently taken, and was forced into a ceasefire with little to show for the manpower and equipment lost and the settlers displaced. The war with Lebanon was fast, but still slow enough to allow a degree of analysis and prediction. In contrast, the sheer speed of Syria’s collapse has made analysis near-impossible beyond obvious statements like “this is bad” and “Assad is fucking up”; by the time a major Syrian city had fallen, you barely had time to digest the implications before the next one was under threat.
There is still too much that we don’t know about the potential responses (and non-responses) of other countries in the region - Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Russia, for example. I think that this week and the next will see a lot of statements made by various parties and an elucidation of how the conflict will progress. The only thing that seems clear is that we are in the next stage of the conflict, and perhaps have been, in retrospect, since Nasrallah’s assassination. This stage has been and will be far more chaotic as the damage to Israel compounds and they are willing to take greater and greater risks to stay in power. It will also involve Israel causing destruction all throughout the region, rather than mostly localizing it in Gaza and southern Lebanon. Successful gambles like with Syria may or may not outweigh the unsuccessful ones like with Lebanon. This is a similar road to the one apartheid South Africa took, but there are also too many differences to say if the destination will be the same.
What is certain is that Assad’s time in power can be summarized as a failure, both to be an effective leader and to create positive economic conditions. His policies were actively harmful to internal stability for no real payoff and by the end, all goodwill had been fully depleted. By the end, the SAA did not fight back; not because of some wunderwaffen on the side of HST, but because there was nothing to fight for, and internal cohesion rapidly disintegrated.
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Last week’s thread is here.
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.
I truly don’t get how this is that big a sea change? Why would people be equally as threatened by an Oreshnik than a nuke?
Because you cant defend against it. Its like why a sword isn’t as scary as a bullet. Sure a sword can take off a limb but you can block it or run away but a bullet will go through most things and you cant outrun it.
Oreshnik wont replace strategic nukes but it can do what tactical nukes are designed for with none of the radiation or taboo. Strategic nukes are basically props that uphold MAD. Tactical nukes are designed to destroy entire armies with a single strike but they are basically unusable because the difference between using them or Strategic is just a matter of scale. Any use of a tactical nuke sets off the MAD responses the same way strategic nukes would.
Because Oreshnik is a conventional weapon it can be deployed without anyone saying it is a WMD or a contravention of any treaties. Oreshnik decimated a giant factory. We haven’t seen how serious the damage was but we can theorise what happens when something the weight of a warhead strikes the ground at mach 10. We also have seen how hard the west is working to keep secret how things look after the strike.
because it cannot be stopped, no known defense against it and it can pinpoint hit anywhere within tens of thousands of kms
An airbase really. Submunition warheads can do large scale damage to such installations, and kinetic submunitions travelling at 2.5-3.0 kilometres per second on impact will slice through any hardened aircraft shelter that ordinary conventional explosive submunitions would be unable to damage or penetrate. Each single Oreshnik IRBM has 6 groupings of 6 submunitions each, for a total of 36 submunitions. Think of Oreshnik as the missile version of a shotgun with six shells in the magazine tube, and each shell contains six pellets each, that can penetrate body armour. Now for instance, if Russia fired 6 of these Oreshnik IRBMs, you’re looking at 36 seperate groupings, and 216 total kinetic submunitions. Again, this is only from 6 missiles.
There was a graphic going around after Iran’s strike on Nevatim Airbase in Israel, showing how much more targets Iran could have hit if they used submunitions. It was quite eye opening, I’ll see if I can find it. Now Iran did not use submunitions in that attack, because conventional submunitions would not have the kinetic energy, nor the explosive power to penetrate the hardened aircraft shelters at Nevatim, where Israel stored their F-35s. Oreshnik has no such issues with the kinetic energy of it’s submunitions impacting the target at such high speeds.
At the end of the day Oreshnik is a conventional prompt strike (CPS) weapons system, there’s some interesting reading on that if you’re looking at the impact CPS weapons can have on deterrence and nuclear doctrine. If you google or research CPS weapons, you can find some interesting things, feel free to post anything interesting if you do so, it’s a topic that hasn’t seen much debate since it was last a big issue in meetings between Putin and Obama. The Bush Jr administration was actually the first to consider the development of such a weapon.
Imagine having the ability to decimate an entire military formation, total destruction of enemy air bases and installations, with a single launch of a rocket without having to resort to complicated aerial operations that involve hundreds of planes/missiles in the air.
Currently the only weapon that can deliver this sort of damage is a tactical nuke. Oreshnik completely changed the game on this front. There is nothing in this world that can stop it. And there is no NATO equivalent.
With sufficient numbers Russia can completely decimate NATO military in Europe with precision without having to launch a single nuke.
For one thing, it sends a signal that they can directly touch any leader in the world, even if they’re in a bunker.
Enough of these things could theoretically destroy an entire leg of the US nuclear triad and there’s no answer for it yet.