Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
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.
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 ~ 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/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/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.
It's always interesting how jet pilots dropping bombs are never called terrorists, despite every single one of them being one. What difference is there between throwing a bomb by hand or throwing a bomb by gadget? The "civilized" approach just shields the perp from consequences of their actions, making them a cowardly terrorist as well.
I'm a retvrn guy for silly pike formations and pushing each other around battles if you can't tell. Also fucking hate movies with jetpilots, top gun? More like lunch gone 🤮
But propaganda always try to shows dogfights instead of you know "hospital target locked, target eliminated, bring it home"
Terrorism is non-state actors. Anyone with planes to bomb is part of a state military, and what they do falls under war crimes. But since , Israel can not do war crimes.
What ever happened to the definition of using terror to achieve political ends? Why include state actors in this definition, already a hazy category. Rargh
yes basically that's how they treat the label now. Not really a surprise, it's a big table at "international community" but NSAs aren't allowed to sit at it, so when they make demands they have to be collectively suppressed by the "real" states lest the whole system start coming apart. That's what the "Global War on Terror" was all about, reasserting American hegemony over these hotspots of revolt.
However with the Donbass war and Palestine resistance flaring up into larger conflicts, I think the world is beginning to recognize that the old nation-state based UN system established after WW2 isn't able to resolve these disputes anymore. The number of non-state actors and the conflicts they're involved in has exploded in recent decades and they have proven they can get shit done, even taking and holding territory from states. At that point, when you can control your own land and population, the only thing separating you from the "real" states is their recognition.
And now everyone is talking about Hamas and Hezbollah like they would have talked about the Arab States a few decades ago, even Israel. Them calling it the "Israel-Hamas War" rhetorically elevates Hamas a level of statehood funnily enough, though I think they're doing that because Hamas is the scariest to the West.