Bulletins and News Discussion from December 9th to December 15th, 2024 - Assad Must Go
Bulletins and News Discussion from December 9th to December 15th, 2024 - Assad Must Go
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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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.
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Earlier this morning, Russia conducted a 6 and a half hour long missile attack on Ukrainian energy infrastructure and military targets, one of the longest attacks of the war so far, consisting of between 90-100 missiles. Before the missile phase of this attack, Russia also launched a large Geran-2 drone attack to soften up Ukraine's defenses of between 190-200 drones. Ukrainian sources state that the combined two phase attack consisted of between 280-300 missiles and drones combined. They claimed to have shot down 81 missiles and 80 drones, and 105 drones "lost their targets" (this shoot down claim doesn't even deserve any serious consideration, I'm only including it to give an idea of the amount of missiles and drones fired).
Note: each icon consists of a group of drones and cruise missiles, and not a single missile.
Drones were all of type Geran-2, a Russian variant of the Shahed 136 (yellow on the graphic, 190-200 launched). The missile attack consisted of Kh-101 air launched, subsonic, low flying cruise missiles launched from Tu-95M strategic bombers (purple, 50-60 launched), Kh-22/32 high flying, supersonic air launched cruise missiles likely launched from Tupolev Tu-22M strategic bombers (green, 1 launched), Kh-59 air launched, subsonic, low flying cruise missiles that can be launched from a variety of Russian fighter-bomber aircraft (in this case Su-30s were the suspected carriers)(pink, 1-2 launched), Kalibir subsonic low flying cruise missiles launched from the Black sea fleet (blue, 20-30 launched), Iskander ballistic missiles launched from the ground (olive green, 5-10 launched), and Kinzhal air launched ballistic missiles launched from MiG-31K aircraft (white, 4-8 launched).
As a result over 50% of Ukraine is said to be without electricity today. Remember, there are hard limits to any de-electrification of Ukraine, Russia cannot strike the sources supplying secondary power to Ukraine's nuclear power plants significantly, such a move could endanger the stability of the reactors. This is a continuation of Russia's de-electrification campaign in Ukraine, and the attack has been planned for some days/weeks, with movements of strategic bombers. Just before this attack by Russia was launched, Ukraine fired US made and targeted ATACMS ballistic missiles at Russia, striking targets within it's internationally recognised borders.
I'm guessing this was done to frame this Russian attack as a panicked response, rather than a predetermined and planned attack. Russia has in fact been on the front foot the entire time, the first large missile attack of this winter took place before Ukraine got permission to use long range US, UK and French weapons to strike Russian territory. Ukraine is likely trying to reframe that. Initially this was done by stating that the permission to launch attacks into Russia using ATACMS and Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles was because of North Korean soldiers, now it's being done by launching ATACMS attacks just before Russian attacks.
In response, I'll guess that Ukraine is planning to launch a Strom Shadow/SCALP attack on Russia. Ukrainian MiG-29 escort aircraft, which carry anti radiation US made HARM missiles to suppress air defences, escorting the Su-24 bombers carrying the Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles to their launch sites, have been spotted making strategic movements. Ukraine could also be bluffing though, too much is unknown. But do not be surprised if there's another Storm Shadow/SCALP attack in the coming days.
Ukrainian claimed shoot down numbers, again just for an idea of what was fired
The map suggests that all of the missiles were fired from pre-2014 Russia territory. Is there a reason for this?
Also, does the large Russian missile barrages target Ukrainian electricity infrastructure exclusively or do they also target other types of targets, like those directly associated with the ATACMS attacks?
KH-101 missiles are launched from Tu-95M strategic bombers (sometimes Tu-160, but not today), these bombers are the Russian version of B-52 bombers, very vulnerable to air defence systems, and the Kh-101 missiles have a very long range, over 5000km with a 400kg warhead (shorter with a larger warhead). There's no need to come close to Ukrainian airspace and risk getting shot down. The Kh-101 missiles are even launched over the Caspian Sea quite often, so they can be safely launched from high altitude to maximize their range potential. They often fly in weird directions over Ukrainian airspace, zig zaging and flying towards cities before turning around, to confuse air defence systems about their actual target and avoid air defenses, they don't fly in a straight line to the target. Kalibrs are launched from ships, so that's self explanatory. Geran-2 drones are launched from specialised drone/airbases, so I'd guess those facilities have not been built within the previously Ukrainian territory yet.
Iskanders are launched from the ground from mobile launch vehicles, I think there's a launch base in Donetsk, it's suspected that Russia has conducted launches from there before. Kh-59s are launched from fighter bomber aircraft like the Su-30, Su-34, etc, risk of getting shot down is too high. Kinzhals are launched by the MiG-31K, a very fast aircraft capable of hitting Mach 2.8, but still risky to fly over Ukrainian territory.
The only aircraft you'll see (or won't see, haha) launching strikes behind Ukrainian lines is the Su-57 with the Kh-69 cruise missiles, it's stealth allows it to do so with less risk.
Oh I forgot to answer the second part of your question, sorry
Also, does the large Russian missile barrages target Ukrainian electricity infrastructure exclusively or do they also target other types of targets, like those directly associated with the ATACMS attacks?
Kinzhals are likely for high value military targets or hardened targets, think air defence systems like Patriot, potential F-16 hangars, Su-24 hangars (Ukraine's Storm Shadow/SCALP delivery system), weapons depots, that sort of target. The Kh-101s and Kalibirs are mostly going towards electrical infrastructure, from the videos of previous attacks. Some even have submunitions warheads designed to blanket cover substations. The drones hit everything, they're just to soften up Ukraine's defenses in my opinion.
I wonder why Russia has shifted to doing attacks partially during daylight hours in the morning. There are at least two videos from this attack of Ukrainian forces successfully shooting down missiles with MANPADS and AA guns (because they could see them and manually aim at them).
Maybe to strike the power grid during higher electricity usage? Any other theories?
Could be due to weather and/or temperature. With Geran-2 drones, I imagine they could be affected. Fuel lines freezing, icing up of wings, that could all affect cruise missiles too
This is why I suspect the drone/hologram stuff in the US is just increased wartime readiness and a way of keeping the local populace calm as military drills increase, but better to push aliens or Iranians
