news

If you have evidence of Israeli 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 Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

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.
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.

But there’s another reason the Kremlin’s troops are advancing in the area: poor Ukrainian defenses. Sparse, rudimentary trench lines populate the area west of Avdiivka that Ukraine is trying to defend, according to a Times review of imagery by Planet Labs, a commercial satellite company. These trench lines lack many of the additional fortifications that could help slow Russian tanks and help defend major roads and important terrain. Avdiivka became the site of a fierce standoff over the last nine months, emerging as one of the bloodiest battles of the war. When Russia captured the city on Feb. 17, its first major gain since last May, the Ukrainian Army claimed it had secured defensive lines outside the city.

But Russian troops have captured three villages to the west of Avdiivka in the span of a week, and they are contesting at least one other.

Satellite imagery at the scale shown here is widely available. U.S. officials said on Wednesday that it was concerning that Ukraine did not shore up its defensive lines early or well enough, and that it may now face the consequences as Russian units advance slowly but steadily beyond Avdiivka.

British military intelligence said on Thursday that Russian forces had advanced to about four miles from the center of Avdiivka in the past two weeks, a small but unusually rapid advance compared with previous offensive operations.

Ukrainian commanders have had ample time to prepare defenses outside Avdiivka. The area has been under attack since 2014, and Ukraine has had a tenuous hold on it since Russia launched its full-scale invasion two years ago.

But the Ukrainian defenses outside Avdiivka show rudimentary earthen fortifications, often with a connecting trench for infantry troops to reach firing positions closest to the enemy, but little else.

Stronger Russian Defenses

The lack of robust Ukrainian entrenchments in the area is especially glaring when compared with the formidable Russian defenses that thwarted Kyiv’s advances last summer during the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which ultimately failed.

Russian fortifications outside the southern village of Verbove, which Ukraine tried and failed to retake this fall, show a much different picture.

Unlike the poorly fortified villages that Russian forces are trying to capture outside Avdiivka, Verbove has a concentric ring of fortifications. It starts with a trench wide enough to ensnare advancing tanks and armored vehicles, followed by a mesh of cement obstacles known as dragon’s teeth — also used to stop vehicles — and, finally, a sprawling trench for the infantry.

Satellite imagery from February shows the multilayered Russian defenses to the west of Verbove, with thousands of shell craters visible in the surrounding fields.

There are many possible reasons for Ukraine’s apparent lack of defenses.

Ukrainian officials may have been too focused on offensive operations last year to dedicate the necessary resources to building the kind of multiple trenches and tank traps that Russian engineers built since late 2022 in the country’s south, the U.S. officials and military experts said.

“Who cared and who considered it as an option — because it’s a very costly option — the construction of defensive lines? No one,” said Serhiy Hrabskyi, a retired Ukrainian Army colonel, noting that Ukraine had few resources to spare at the time.

There may have also been a psychological element at play, the U.S. officials said. If Ukrainian troops heavily mined certain areas to thwart Russian advances, it would be a tacit acknowledgement that they were unlikely to carry out offensive operations in the same area at a future date. They’d effectively be writing off that territory to the Russian military, the officials said.

While Moscow began building defensive lines in the south more than half a year before Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Ukraine appeared to have begun plans for new fortifications only three months ago, when government officials announced the creation of a working group to coordinate efforts between civilian and military authorities. Responsibility for building the first line of defense would fall to the military units stationed in the area, the officials said, while the next defensive lines would be built by civilian authorities, with the help of private contractors. Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine’s prime minister, said that some 30 billion Ukrainian hryvnias, about $800 million, had been allocated for fortifications this year.

Areas in the eastern Donetsk region, where Avdiivka is, “will receive maximum attention,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a visit near the front line in late November, noting the “need to boost and accelerate the construction of structures.”

But Pasi Paroinen, an analyst from the Black Bird Group, which analyzes satellite imagery and social media content from the battlefield, said that “nothing significant has happened” since Mr. Zelensky’s visit.

Outside of Avdiivka, Mr. Paroinen added, “there are new positions being prepared, but they do not yet constitute a particularly formidable defensive line” and are not comparable in scale to Russia’s fortifications in the south. The Ukrainian authorities have said they lack people able to carry out the construction work. In mid-January, local officials in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region said they were looking for 300 workers willing to help build fortifications in the Donetsk region, more than 500 miles to the east.

“We have a lack of engineering units. And even the units we have lack equipment,” Mr. Hrabskyi said. By comparison, he and Mr. Paroinen said, Russia had far more equipment, materials and experienced personnel when it built its defensive lines.

The absence of strong defensive lines outside of Avdiivka has been denounced in recent days by several Ukrainian journalists, in a rare show of public criticism of the military.

Delays in the construction of fortifications mean that Ukrainian troops may now be left to reinforce their defensive lines while under fire from the Russian Army, making the task exponentially more difficult.

Mr. Hrabskyi said Russia was currently preventing Ukrainian troops from shoring up their defenses by relentlessly bombarding them, including with powerful glide bombs carrying hundreds of tons of explosives that can smash through even well-prepared fortifications.

“The quality of these defensive lines cannot be good enough to resist massive bulldozer tactics by the Russian forces,” Mr. Hrabskyi said.

Kirsty Paterson and Jenny Fogarty were hired to play Oompa Loompas at the now infamous Willy Wonka Chocolate Experience in Glasgow last weekend, but admitted they “had no idea what they were walking into”.

Hundreds of families were left disappointed after paying to attend the event, which was cancelled halfway through its first day. At one point even the police were called.

Pictures of the experience have gone viral on social media and made headline news around the world.

Organisers House of Illuminati have apologised, promised refunds, and said they would hold no future events.

Kirsty Paterson, 29, who has been branded the "sad Oompa Loompa" on social media has been shocked by the reaction.

She told BBC Scotland News: “We are just normal people, I can’t believe this has happened.

“When we took the job we had no idea what we were walking into.

“You just have to throw yourself in and play the character. We just had fun with it, that’s all you can do.”

In her day job, Kirsty is a fire performer and trainee yoga instructor from Glasgow.

She said: "We turned up on the Friday - bearing in mind we had already signed a contract by this point - we looked at the scene and it was just bizarre."

The experience had been advertised as a Wonka wonderland, using images generated using artificial intelligience.

Instead, the women found a “few pieces of cloth hanging up” and a venue that was “really poorly put together”.

“I thought they were going to have people working through the night to make it look better but that was not the case," Kirsty said.

"I think all the parents who attended can vouch, we were lovely, we didn’t make the children cry, we really tried our best."

Fellow Oompa Loompa Jenny Fogarty, 25, is a production designer and small business owner, originally from Dublin but now living in Glasgow.

She added: "We just decided to do the best we could, given the circumstances.

"We are experienced working with children so we were just trying to make it as fun as possible for them.

"It was really difficult, there was children coming in with birthday badges, some dressed up as little Willy Wonkas, they were just so excited coming in and we had to be like ‘sorry this is it’."

Kirsty and Jenny said they went through three 45-minute performances before they were instructed to abandon the script they had been given just 12 hours before.

That was when “everything began to go downhill”, they said.

Videos about the event have been viewed hundreds of millions of time on TikTok, Twitter and Facebook.

The event has made headlines in newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Kirsty said her new-found fame was "overwhelming".

"People need to remember I didn’t put myself out there so this publicity has went on me without my consent really," she said.

"I don’t even really use social media, so it’s been mental."

The reaction became so overwhelming, she turned her phone off for two days.

"I’ve got incredibly thick skin, and I’m always happy to make a joke of myself but I think it did get a bit too much for me when it was outwith my control," she said.

"People were slagging off my looks and everything else."

Kirsty said she was able to see the funny side of it now but felt she had to speak out to show the person behind the green wig.

Jenny said she got off a lot lighter than many of her castmates who have been trolled but she has still been inundated with messages.

"I’ve had friends from different countries who are letting me know they’ve heard about it," she said.

"I’ve had YouTubers that I used to watch when I was like 14 posting about me, it’s bizarre.

"For all the craziness of the past week, it has brought a lot of smiles and a lot of joy to people, its been a whirlwind experience. I don’t think any of us were expecting this when we took a weekend job. It’s crazy the way its blown up.

"I am trained as a production designer. I’ve not been able to get jobs for a few years, so I’m hoping this can help with that. I could definitely put on a better show."

Kirsty and Jenny were only paid half of their agreed fee for the event.

Organisers, House of Illumanati said on social media they will be holding no future events.

A petition to to bring back the experience has been launched, while Scottish actress Karen Gillan has said she wants to star in a film adaptation of the event.