One year on. Hundreds of thousands are dying or dead, millions are displaced, the Middle East is undergoing its greatest changes in a generation, Iran has directly attacked Israel twice in one year, and Yemen has proven that the US Navy ain't worth shit. We are the closest we have been to nuclear war (discounting accidents) in decades, but also the fall of Israel.
Because one day, the prisoners of a concentration camp paraglided over a wall.
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.
New info on the Nord Stream bombing just came out from the Danish paper Politiken, stating that the harbor master of Christiansø island (Near Bornholm) thought some ships needed rescue as their radios were off, and was turned away by the US military when approached.
For the first few days, the harbor master said he was ‘not allowed to say a thing.’ But today, John Anker Nielsen can reveal that four or five days before the Nord Stream blasts, he was out with the rescue service on Christiansø, because there were some ships with switched-off radios [transponders]. They turned out to be American naval vessels, and when the rescue service approached, they were told by Naval Command to turn back.
The Americans have these small unmanned submarines that can solve any task, John Anker Nielsen has been told. The harbor master’s family has lived on Christiansø for seven generations, and he knows all about the weather and wind conditions in the Baltic Sea. Against this background, he doesn’t give much credence to the theory of a yacht and some Ukrainians diving down to 80 meters
Interestingly, it corroborates what MoA was saying as far back as February 9, 2023 as he corrected Hersh's specifics, which were inaccurate when talking about the timing window. This was days after Hersh's article. Hersh said the bombs were planted months in advance at some NATO exercise, MoA pointed out this was unlikely for various reasons and instead the bombs were planted there by US navy vessels a few days before the blast with transponders turned off. He was exactly correct.
It is unlikely that the explosives were put out while the yearly BALTOPS exercise was still ongoing... The whole exercise took only 12 days. A lot of nations took part. Submarines were involved. The Russian's were around watching what was happening. (They like also had submarines in the wider area.)
Those are not good conditions to do a lot of secret underwater work. It was much easier to do this later, when everyone had turned back to port. The U.S. ships though did not sail home. They stayed around, did some harbor visits and eventually settled down near the island of Bornholm a few miles away from the pipelines where they started to do their work.
To blow such pipelines takes a lot more than just putting a few pounds of C4 explosives on top of them. The pipelines had first to be dug out, must likely with pressurized water. Next explosives had to be placed all around them. Then a trigger mechanism of some kind had to be deployed and fixed on to them. Lastly the explosive laden section would have to be reburied to prevent detection or unforeseen entanglement with some external elements. All this had to be done at least four times. If I had planned the operation I probably would have gone for a total of eight explosive packages.
The whole process takes time. Unmanned submarine like vehicles were needed to carry the hundreds of kilograms of explosives and equipment. Diving time at that depth is not unlimited and there must have been a few crew changes. It probably took three to four weeks to fix the whole issue.
The USS Kearsarge was much longer in the Baltic Sea than Hersh presumes. The explosives were put down sometime between the end of BALTOPS on June 17 and September 22, the date the USS Kearsarge passed Fehmarn to leave the Baltic Sea.
That window was not [extended] by months between the end of BALTOPS and the explosions but by a mere few days between somewhat around September 20 when the Kearsarge went on its way back home and September 27 when the pipelines exploded.
The Kearsarge was likely selected for purpose. The ship has a well deck, which opens to the sea through huge gates in the ship's stern. There, the cargo, troops and vehicles are loaded onto landing craft for transit to the beach. The air cushion landing craft can "fly" out of the dry well deck, or the well deck can be flooded so that conventional landing craft can float out on their way to the beach.
Usually the Kearsarge would be a too big missile target to be in the Baltic Sea. But the well deck comes in handy when one wants to test new underwater equipment or put explosives around pipelines:
In support of BALTOPS, U.S. Navy 6th Fleet partnered with U.S. Navy research and warfare centers to bring the latest advancements in unmanned underwater vehicle mine hunting technology to the Baltic Sea to demonstrate the vehicle’s effectiveness in operational scenarios.
Christiansø is basically right on top of Bornholm. MoA got the motive, the suspect, the location, the timeline all correct - more correct than Hersh and all his CIA contacts who only got the suspect and motive correct. I realize he's since become controversial for some boomer takes, but there's a reason we still read and link to him. He knows what the fuck he's talking about when it comes to NATO navies and armies. He had already unearthed most of this 2 days after the bombings, and Hersh took nearly 5 months to put out a less accurate version of what b just sleuthed out from knowing about NATO navies.
As with any criminal case, it all comes down to means, motive, and opportunity. Out of all organizations in the world, only the US government checks all three boxes.
Now we have more than purely circumstantial evidence though, I think the harbor master's testimony is a slam dunk that it was definitely US Navy Seals who lingered after the BALTOPS exercises in the area around Bornholm. The rogue Ukrainian yachter hypothesis is thoroughly deboonked.
Seismic experts have also stated it had to be at least 100 kg of TNT equivalent per explosion, of which there were several. This would have taken time, several days or weeks to plant. It would have taken specialized diving equipment to carry this much explosives.
We have a locked in timeline now, some of the ships were still there 4-5 days before the explosion (Sept 21-22 2022). As the USS Kearsarge has about 4000 sailors on it or its escort, most likely were unaware of the operation outside of daily sorties they launch. The ship carries smaller vessels and specialized drones and has a well dock for loading them with cargo. A Navy Seal contingent and support staff of divers likely set off, while the main ship and its group stayed nearby. As this operation likely took days or weeks, the smaller boats would come back to the main ship in shifts
Yes, we know that Russia could have just shut it off whenever they wanted. Yes, we know that European politicians thanked America after it was bombed. Yes, we know NATO just had sea exercises in the area recently. Yes, we know that it was in America and Ukraine’s best interest to bomb the pipeline. But how do we know it wasn’t Russia who bombed the pipeline?
Literally had some dummy go 'by your logic, Denmark also had a hand in this, as their representatives have threatened to destroy Nordstream too!' when I said that it was likely the US who did this, and that Russia had less than zero reason to do this.
I also think a lot of people dunk on Hersh unfairly, likely because he says things that we don't like to hear. As you said, he got a lot right with regards to Nordstream, he was right that Israel would use bunker buster bombs in Gaza and try to flood the tunnels, he was also right that Iran were not going to immediately retaliate against Israel as they were working on a ceasefire agreement (which Israel then proceeded to blow up by assassinating the leaders they were negotiating with, seems to be a standard tactic of the USA, see the Ukrainian negotiators assassinated while working on a peace proposal at the beginning of the war). Considering he only has state department and US three letter agency sources, Hersh gets more right than most journalists in the West.
from what I remember everyone was dunking on him for presenting it like these were fool proof ways of defeating hamas and that the resistance days were numbered.
His info comes mostly from having contacts in high places in the US government. He's great at revealing secret operations the feds are doing like this one, but for stuff like Israel he's mostly limited to what they think is going on, not the reality on the ground.