A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like “in Minecraft”) and comments containing it will be removed.

An image of Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, c. February, where Iranian strikes have caused substantial damage and several US soldier deaths and casualties.

My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preamble

After an uncertain beginning to this second major period of hostilities, we can now see the overall plan for either side.

For the Americans, their fire has been primarily focussed on southern Iran, where they have been attempting to break Iran’s control of Hormuz by a steady campaign of striking both military and civilian sites. Additionally, it looks like the US is attempting to shape the battlefield around Bandas Abbas and Qeshm Island for some kind of incursion, as we have seen bridges and tunnels in the vicinity struck by missiles. The key word there is “attempting”, because there are several things wrong with this plan both tactically and strategically.

Tactically, Iran has demonstrated the ability to very quickly get their transportation infrastructure repaired, and the US simply isn’t firing volleys in the required amounts - and towards the right targets (they’re using several missiles on purely civilian targets, like fishing boats) - to meaningfully degrade Iranian control of even this sector of the coastline. Additionally, an amphibious assault on Qeshm Island in the style of the WW2 Pacific theater is essentially impossible unless Iran, for whatever reason, allowed it. The gauntlet that any ship holding Marines would have to run to get to the island precludes this, let alone also transporting heavy weaponry and materiel for resupply. Using helicopter-borne troops or paratroopers would be much more feasible, but runs into even greater logistical problems if the US wanted to do anything there other than a brief skirmish before withdrawing. Strategically, even if the US waved a magic wand and took Qeshm Island, it’s unclear what this would do to fulfill war aims. The most obvious intention would be to trade it back to Iran in return for a major Iranian concession, but what if you take the island, you call up Iran saying “Alright, let’s get this deal running! First, I want no Hormuz tolls–” and Iran just… hung up, and kept firing drones and missiles and artillery at your forces on the island until they either all died or were forced to retreat? It’s not a tenable position to hold, and Iran’s capabilities to affect shipping in Hormuz are obviously not all concentrated on one single island.

So, what is Iran’s strategy? It’s what one analyst (Amerikanets) has termed “debasification”. If the first phase of the war from late February to mid-April was focussed primarily on generally destroying and disrupting the US’s military infrastructure in the region, what this second phase has planned is something more like a region-wide missile advance. Starting from the Gulf states and their US bases, the plan is to push back American planes and soldiers to further and further afield bases and thereby make sorties against Iran take much more time, fuel, and use more resupply planes. Iranian strikes are, as of me writing this, concentrated on Jordan, where a recent Iranian strike caused the first admission of soldier deaths in quite some time. The Iranian goal is clearly to push back all US planes to at least the Zionist entity, by which point, unless they are withdrawn further back all the way to Europe, the planes will all be so concentrated on so few bases that it will become a physical impossibility to get them all scrambled before Iranian strikes hit. Compared to the US’s strategy, Iran’s is immediately bearing fruit, with US strikes already very limited in intensity compared to the first phase of the war months ago. The irony of the US breaking off negotiations - again! - to pursue a new strategy that already looks to be profoundly failing is truly some inspired stuff; the genocidal architects of American imperium in the mid-20th century are rolling in their graves.

Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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 the Zionists’ 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:

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.

  • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    89·
    5 days ago

    https://archive.ph/1MJBv

    ‘Everyone’s afraid to die’: Struggle to recruit soldiers in Ukraine turns violent

    Vasyl Krupych knows what it is to fight for Ukraine. He describes terrifying scenes from battles in the eastern Donbas region where, sometimes praying, sometimes crying, the machine gunner somehow survived the onslaught by Russian troops. But last December, by then serving in the rear, Krupych was attacked by his own countrymen whilst out searching for draft dodgers. He says two men ignored demands to show their documents and fled. When his patrol gave chase, Krupych was badly beaten with a crowbar. He spent six weeks in hospital. “He broke my rib, I was lying there and couldn’t breathe,” the veteran recalled in a recent interview. “What did we fight for, if soldiers can now get beaten?”

    lol, guy feeding his countrymen into the meatgrinder is really mad at facing some actual resistance. peak cop mentality

    kudos to Ukrainian Gordon Freeman for beating the shit out of this fuck

    more
    Surge in violence

    Ukraine’s military ombudswoman says such attacks are now “regular” and “a major problem” as the country struggles to mobilise men to fight in the fifth, draining year of Russia’s full-scale invasion. It’s not a topic people here care to discuss much, wary of feeding Russian propaganda. But the latest National Police Service report recorded more than 600 assaults on recruitment officers to date and warned that the aggression has become “increasingly threatening”. The first big alert came in April when several recruiters were stabbed, one fatally. Then this month in Lviv, some 200 protesters surrounded officers attempting to detain a suspected draft dodger and smashed and overturned their car. The riot made headlines as President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned violence against serving soldiers. His controversial decision since then to sack Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov – over a clash of character and vision with Ukraine’s commander-in-chief – means attempts to address the conscription crisis will stall. But the anger that just exploded in Lviv suggests that the need is urgent.

    ‘Busification’

    The reasons appear to range from plain fear of the front line – now everyone knows someone who’s been injured or killed - to a reluctance to sign up for a war that has no end in sight. The only surge of enthusiasm since the initial rush to the front was in late 2023, when Ukraine launched a counter-offensive to seize back territory in the south-east. It didn’t last. That’s when the “brutal mobilisation” phase began, according to opposition MP Oleksandr Honcharenko. He blames that for the backlash. “These officers are hunting for people on the streets and sometimes using quite violent methods,” the MP says. “Violence leads to violence. It’s a huge problem and it’s going to get worse.” Military analyst Ivan Stupak agrees. “We started to suffer a lack of manpower on the battlefield, constant losses,” he recalls. “Ukraine’s high command had to refill these losses so they started busification.” That’s the term Ukrainians use for mobile patrols that end up with men bundled into buses, and off to serve. “When they need an extra 5,000 men, they start grabbing them - and if they refuse it turns into fights on the street.”

    The professor’s story

    So for every story of a draft officer attacked, there are accounts of violence by recruiters themselves. Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner recorded more than 6,000 such complaints last year - double the 2024 tally. They include claims of abuse and unlawful detention as well as poor conditions at recruitment centres. Kyrylo Ogdansky still gets upset when he talks about what happened to him in Dnipro last November. The university professor, who is exempt from the draft, was approached in the street by a man in plain clothes who wanted to check his call-up status. There are rules about such patrols, including having police officers present, so Ogdansky objected. Then he was assaulted. “One of them knocked the phone from my hand and two pushed me into the bus from behind. When I asked what’s happening, one started to beat me to the head. He hit me in the nose several times,” Ogdansky tells me. He remembers the threat to send him straight to the front line. “He said ‘I can call the commander and you’ll go to Pokrovsk’.” Instead, the professor spent two weeks in hospital with a suspected neck injury and big purple-black bruises beneath his eyes. He has made formal official complaints but was hesitant about speaking publicly, aware that such things look bad for Ukraine in the middle of a war. “Russian propaganda uses such things very actively. But such a problem exists,” Ogdansky explains his decision. “If everyone is silent, then why would it stop? I understand the problem of conscription, but no official has the right to act like this.”

    Vasyl’s story

    It’s clear that Vasyl Krupych experienced horrors at war. He volunteered at the very start and has survived some of the grimmest battles. Krupych is proud of his service - a tattoo on his neck declares “Glory to the Ukrainian Armed Forces” – but he suffers from nightmares. When his vehicle was hit by an FPV drone, he was badly injured but managed to drag one friend to safety. He saw two others burned to death. Now, when we discuss the increase in attacks against draft officers, his words drip with hurt. It’s not just about what he suffered himself: that case is still going through the courts. It’s also the gulf between what he has endured and those doing everything possible to avoid the same. “We are doing our duty. We fought, we defended our people - and now they are attacking us.” I wonder what he thinks might motivate people to serve, instead of coercing them, and he mentions raising salaries. But then he shrugs. “It can’t be done differently, it can’t. Our lads need to be replaced. But nobody volunteers,” he says. “Everyone is afraid to die.”

    What to do?

    In his six months as defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov did start introducing reforms to tackle the growing crisis. He began with moves meant to make military service more attractive: fixed-term contracts for new recruits, with the option to defer further service, and better salaries, especially for the riskiest roles. But it was an early work in progress and overhauling conscription was still on his to-do list when he was sacked. Proposals have included handing draft patrols over to police, who are less personally invested in the task. There’s talk of proper training, too, for officers, and psychological screening. Ukraine does admit openly that it has a problem, which is new. But it now has only an acting defence minister, and still no solution.

    • SexUnderSocialism [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      68·
      5 days ago

      It’s not a topic people here care to discuss much, wary of feeding Russian propaganda.

      We might feed Russian propaganda if we tell you the truth. Therefore we will continue to lie to you.

      • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        49·
        5 days ago

        “Freeman”'s a really apt name for a guy dodging the draft too

        zelensky-pain “And yet unsophisticated minds continue to imbue him with romantic power, giving him such dangerous poetic labels as the ‘One Free Man’, the ‘Opener of the Way’.”

    • InexplicableLunchFiend [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      29·
      5 days ago

      So for every story of a draft officer attacked, there are accounts of violence by recruiters themselves. Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner recorded more than 6,000 such complaints last year

      But the latest National Police Service report recorded more than 600 assaults on recruitment officers to date

      Here we see the Ukrainian difficulty with arithmetic. 600 attacks on recruiters since 2022 vs. 6000 attacks on recruitees in 2025 alone. This is somehow “for every story of an officer attacked, there are accounts of violence by recruiters”. Yes, one side that is empowered by the state and regularly beats and attacks and sends hundreds of thousands to certain death is just as bad as the side that defends themselves maybe 2% of the time.

      Here we see the bullshit “clashes” type equivocation of Nazi barbarity of the west vs. those who resist it