Shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia:
The Soledar Salt Mines (also called Artyomsol Salt Mines after the State Enterprise Association Artyomsol that operates the mines) are located in the city/suburb of Soledar in the Bakhmut municipality in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. The scale of the mines is vast. The mines have 125 miles of tunnel, are at a depth of 288m, and many of the chambers are 30 meters in height, The largest resembles a hangar of about 100 meters long and 40 meters width and 40 m height, and has accommodated soccer matches and the inflation of a hot air balloon.
On the 5th of January, 2023, the Wagner Group and Russian Armed Forces took parts of Soledar’s east, forcing the Armed Forces of Ukraine to step back and take up defenses further west and in the central parts of Soledar. The salt mine has since become a critical point for Ukrainian defense of Soledar and Bakhmut, utilizing the deep tunnels of the salt mine to maintain a defensive line in Soledar, as well as to keep stockpiles of supplies and launch attacks on Russian positions from their rear.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we’ve collected.
January 9th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 10th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 11th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 13th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 14th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
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 fairly brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. The Duran, of which he co-hosts, is where the chuddery really begins to spill out.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ Now rebranded as Battlefield Insights, they do infrequent posts on the conflict.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it’s a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of the really big pro-Russian (except when they’re being pessismistic, which is often) telegram channels focussing on the war. Russian language.
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
Any Western media outlet that is even vaguely liberal (and quite a few conservative ones too).
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.
Last week’s discussion post.
Unprovoked!
by Consortium News.
In an interview with the Useful Idiots podcast not too long ago, Noam Chomsky repeated his argument that the only reason we hear the word “unprovoked” every time anyone mentions Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the mainstream news media is because it absolutely was provoked, and they know it.
“Right now, if you’re a respectable writer and you want to write in the main journals, you talk about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you have to call it ‘the unprovoked’ Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Chomsky said.
“It’s a very interesting phrase; it was never used before. You look back, you look at Iraq, which was totally unprovoked, nobody ever called it ‘the unprovoked invasion of Iraq.’ In fact, I don’t know if the term was ever used — if it was it was very marginal. Now you look it up on Google, and hundreds of thousands of hits. Every article that comes out has to talk about the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.”
“Why? Because they know perfectly well it was provoked,” Chomsky said. “That doesn’t justify it, but it was massively provoked. Top U.S. diplomats have been talking about this for 30 years, even the head of the C.I.A.”
Chomsky is of course correct here. The imperial media and their brainwashed automatons have spent many months mindlessly bleating the word “unprovoked” in relation to this war, but one question none of them ever have a straight answer for is this: if the invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked, how come so many Western experts spent years warning that the actions of Western governments would provoke an invasion of Ukraine?
Because, as Chomsky notes, that is indeed the case. A few days after the invasion began in February of last year a guy named Arnaud Bertrand put together an extremely viral Twitter thread that just goes on and on and on about the various diplomats, analysts and academics in the West who have over the years been warning that a dangerous confrontation with Russia was coming because of NATO advancements toward its borders, interventionism in Ukraine and various other aggressions.
