World War III (When Hell awakes)

World War III (often abbreviated to WWIII or WW3), also known as the Third World War, the "Final War“, the "War to End all Peace", or the "Impossible War", was a global war that lasted from 2022 to 2029 and ended the so called "Long Peace" of the "Pax Americana“.

The vast majority of the world's nations -among them all nuclear powers- eventually formed two opposing alliances: the Allies and the Revolutionist Powers. In a state of total war, more than almost 3 billion people from over 100 nations were mobilized, making WW3 the largest war in human history, surpassing its predecessor, World War II. With fighting occurring on every continent, including small operations against satellite stations in Antarctica, WW3 was also the most widespread war in history. The main participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the line between civilian and military resources. The Third World War was the deadliest conflict in the history of mankind, marked by 150 to 200 million casualties, including the victims of various war crimes, like the Uyghur and Kurdish genocides, the ethnic cleansing of Shias and Sunnis, the carpet bombing of the Gaza Strip, the massacres against the Crimean Tatarians, Kashmiri Muslims and Indians, Israelis, Tibetans and Taiwanese, and many more. Millions more died in the years after the war, due to famine, disease, follow-up conflicts or the long term effects of nuclear and chemical warfare.

The war would not just see regular combat, it would also see some of the worst of the worst atrocities committed as well as extensive use of chemical gas, trench warfare, use of mercenaries, ballistic and nuclear missile use and would soon put the world in another economic downturn and civil unrest in several areas. This would later result in the CSTO-Sino Split, Second Chinese Civil War, independence of new countries, collapse of dictatorships, dismantlement of several alliances both militarily and economically and the Global Economic Crisis.

The Allied Powers:
Based off of NATO, the Allied Powers had some of the strongest countries allied with them with some of them being, India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Indonesia. They also included a majority of the nuclear powers. Most nations in Africa, north and south would also join the Allied Powers. Almost all of South America except for Venezuela would join the Allied Powers. The alliance would suffer cracks in their leadership as after the war, much of the American General Public would question the Biden and Harris administrations for their handling of the war and actions before the start of the conflict.

North America: The United States who had mostly maintained it's army superiority was mostly kept in shape but struggled when China and Russia would launch conventional bombers and missile strikes on the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and Hawaii, it had a hard time from recovering such a punch on its mainland. Canada and Mexico suffered similar beatings by Russian and Chinese attacks on British Columbia and Baja California. Biden's presidency would be called into question for Biden's actions of the war and previous handling of other conflicts such as the ISAF coalition withdrawing and letting important cities like Kandahar in Afghanistan fall. Ultimately, the FBI and CIA would look into his presidency but conspirators would later take hold of the investigation. The backlash against Biden, however, would fail in the most spectacular way; Biden would suffer a stroke and die in the midst of the 2024 campaign. His successor, Kamala Harris, would portray the war as a pursuit of the final triumph of liberal democracy in Biden's memory, and would go on to achieve landslide victories in the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections respectively making her the first female US president to help win a war at a desperate hour.

Europe: Most of Europe joined the Allied Powers except for Belarus and Serbia because of their ties to Russia. The EU who was also allied with the US was facing a diplomatic crisis due to their handling of the COVID-19 Pandemic. With the economic alliance struggling to maintain stability, Russia has been militarizing against Ukraine who had been in combat against the Donbass and Luhansk insurgents. Russian defectors who had fled Russia were now targeted by Russian spies. One of those defectors being Alexey Nawanly who was allegedly poisoned by Russian spies. Switzerland was forced to join the conflict as while the CSTO had been advancing on Europe, Putin made it clear that every part of Europe would kneel before Russia including neutral countries like Switzerland. This also didn't favor Switzerland as during the Russian shock campaign, Russian Tu-160 and Tu-95 bombers accidentally flew over Swiss airspace and bombed villages confusing them for NATO strongholds in the Alps. This along with CSTO forces threatning Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia and other European countries, they had reluctantly joined the conflict with the Allies. Austria joined the war on behalf of the Allied Powers after CSTO forces violated Austrian neutrality during the shock campaign. The European microstates stayed neutral including Ireland. Russian aggression is what forced Europe and America's hand to increase the number of soldiers in threatened territories like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Tensions had been increasing with China on matters such as the treatment of Uyghur Muslims, crackdown on Hong Kong protesters, South China Sea occupation would rise due to the creation of an alliance. Several EU members were resistant to oppose China in a rising Second Cold War. most notably Germany, despite being influential with many of the members of the EU, some made allegations that Germany raised the tensions in Europe. Conspirators say that Germany's controversial gas pipeline, Nordstream 2 transported Russian gas which directly came from Russia while bypassing several countries in Eastern Europe. Germany was forced into conflict, however when Russia invaded its NATO partners, mainly because of some of their troops in the Baltics, Afghanistan (which were withdrawing) and Mali. The German AfD Party partially took the blame with Germany's involvement in the conflict as they bribed members of the German Bundestag and had been collaborating with Putin in acts of collaboration. Hungary, led by Viktor Orban would also take the blame for the European campaign as he had been in secret talks with Putin and were pushing on peace terms that would give him such benefits, but General Jens Stoltenberg and other Allied Leaders, including the Hungarian Parliament pressured Viktor to end collaboration talks and directly support the allies as countries like Slovakia and Hungary itself was threatened by Russian forces at their doorstep in occupied Poland and Ukraine. The Italian Lega Party also carried out acts of bribing in the Italian Parliament and negotiating with Russia for peace terms before suffering crackdowns. The right-wing parties in Europe managed to cause significant damage to the morale in Europe as it had now divided the allied leadership and then led to the European Union Crisis. Finland and Sweden were reluctant at first but were forced to join after Russia invaded Finland and bombed Stockholm. Previous events such as Russian bombers over NATO airspace back in October, 2014, Sweden and Finland were on high alert and such, would've wanted them to join NATO but remained neutral until the campaign in Scandinavia. Most of the Balkan countries except for Serbia joined on the side of the Allied Powers after Serbia's invasion of Kosovo. Republika Sprska, the rouge Bosnian territory also fired shots during Serbia's campaign by attacking civilian areas in Bosnia Herzegovina. When Macedonia joined NATO in 2020, this would further anger Serbia. Transnistria, the Moldovan rouge territory also joined the war on side of the Beijing Powers due to ongoing territorial disputes and after the 2006 referendum, Transnistria was left independent but unrecognized by the UN. Georgia and Azerbaijan who had been drifting into NATO's sphere of influence joined the war to prevent a Russian and Armenian takeover in the Caucus. Georgia's two rouge territories, South Ossetia and Abkhazia waged war with Georgia in a war in 2000 only for Georgia to lose the 2 territories and after the 2008 war with Russia, Georgia hoped to regain it's 2 lost provinces. For Azerbaijan, the country engaged Armenia in a series of conflicts over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. An Azerbaijani-occupied territory full of ethnic Armenians. The 2020 war saw Azerbaijani troops launch a campaign of regaining lost territory in the previous war in 2014 ending in the Status quo ante bellum. Azerbaijan also had troops in Afghanistan as part of the ISAF coalition. The German AFD Party and individuals like Orban advocated for peace in Russia's favor as seeing Russia's state as preferable. Europe, with the manpower of both NATO and CSTO forces, would become one of the bloodiest battlefields in all of World War III.

Middle East: Allies of the United States in the Middle East were mostly members of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) including Qatar. They would contribute a majority of forces in Iraq and helping the US and UK in an invasion of Iran. Saudi Arabia going against their top enemy, Iran would see combat with their GCC allies including Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Sunni militias and with their goal to overthrow the Iranian Mullah Regime and remake Iraq and Syria as Sunni Muslim countries. Important allies of Saudi Arabia being the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt and Israel. While Israel, not fully having ties with Saudi Arabia played an important role in the campaign in Iraq and Syria which would relive pressure from Saudi Arabia's other allies when sending troops. Israel already had it's own bad blood with Iran and had their own proxy wars going on. One of them being Lebanon. Israel's goal in the war itself was to help Saudi Arabia and their allies with terminating Iranian operations in Iraq and Syria. Israel's other war goal was to knock Hezbollah out of Lebanon and provide support for the US by spying in Syria and Lebanon. Israel also annexed Palestine but because of their mistreatment to Palestinians, use of phosphorus rounds and air striking civilian targets, Allied pressure forced Israel to give Palestine independence. Turkey, originally wanted to stay out of the Middle East campaign as they needed to send forces to help NATO in Ukraine and Azerbaijan and Georgia, but due to previous involvement such as Operation Olive Branch in 2018 and their general involvement in Syria, they were forcefully dragged into the conflict. Kurdish fighters in Syria and Iraq at first opposed both Turkish and Arab troops in their territory but sided with them as US fighters would later provide the Saudi-coalition airstrikes and intel which would ultimately align the Kurds with Saudi Arabia and its allies. Yemen is a different story. The Saudi-led coalition's goal in general was to help the Hadi Government of Yemen against Iranian backed terrorist group Houthi along with terrorist groups like Daesh (ISIS) and Al Qaeda. However, this conflict was prolonged than what Saudi Arabia expected. When Senegalese replaced the Sudanese forces that withdrew as Sudan joined the Beijing Powers, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Academi mercenaries and Morocco would launch an offensive into Sana'a but the spearhead led by Saudi Arabia, Morocco and the Academi mercenaries would almost bend until the UAE would bring reinforcements and rescue isolated Yemeni forces and restrengthened the spearhead to Sana'a. The UAE and Qatar would also help the first staging grounds for the invasion of Iran by seizing Qeshm Island, Abu Musa, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb. The combined strength of the GCC, Turkey, Israel, Hadi Government, Kurdish militias, Jordan, Egypt and various Sunni militias proved vital for the Allies as they would have an easier time when dealing with Iranian, Syrian, Iraqi and Russian forces. Despite some not showing regards for human life, the combined arms had made the Middle Eastern front in WW3 was one of the deadliest campaigns in this entire war itself, but the whole would come crashing down under Saudi Arabia's weight as the monarchy got greedy and distrust began to grow in the proxy conflict of Libya. Asia: The powerhouse in Asia, India played an important role as they were the main challenger for China. Despite India being in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS, India's territorial disputes with China like Kashmir never helped with it's ties. Despite having ties with Russia, India left BRICS and the SCO. Pakistan and China wanted India to rejoin their alliances and declared war on India in order to reconsider India to rethink it's decision. India had allowed US forces onto it's soil as a reinforcement and wielding as much manpower they could get. Bhutan and Bangladesh did join India against China as Bhutan was mostly protected by India and that India trains Bhutan's army and continuously funds them. In Korea, the United States' main allies being Japan, South Korea and Taiwan were hit hard in the first days of the war. Taiwan joined the war after the Chinese invasion and PLA Navy encirclement of the island country. Taiwan was occupied by China after Xi Jinping launched Operation National Unity which was the invasion of Taiwan. China's hold on Taiwan wasn't strong as resistance fighting would increase. South Korea was one of the main targets by the Beijing Powers and it helped light the spark that led to WW3. Japan, the economic powerhouse in northeastern Asia had also engaged China as tensions from the Second World War and previous Sino-Japanese wars with the first one dating back to 1894. ASEAN joined the war after China would not let go of the claim over the Parcel and Spratly Islands. They played a part on preventing India from being encircled from the north, south and west. Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos refused and joined the Beijing Powers due to their strong ties with China. Vietnam also played a more important part when going against China. They had been on the frontline for weeks. The Philippines was also targeted by China with bombing campaigns and surrounding it to prevent any trade arriving. Australia and New Zealand, traditional US allies supported the entire war effort with the United States and helped on the Indian, Vietnamese and Korean fronts of the war and sending an expeditionary force the Europe and the Middle East. Islands in the Pacific including Papua New Guinea joined the Allies out of fear of China's navy all over the South China Sea and Pacific Ocean. Islands like Guam only joined out of fear of Chinese aggression.

Africa: Africa is hard to cover as many countries had trouble on which side to choose. Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt joined the Allied Powers due to traditional ties with the United States and as major non-NATO allies in order to protect the Mediterranean, Cyprus and Gibraltar. Morocco would then engage Algeria due to their old tensions over the disputed Western Sahara. Mauritania, who has good ties with Morocco would intervene against Algeria and Western Sahara as Mauritania had supported Morocco in the Western Sahara War. Senegal was already at war due to their involvement in the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen and had deployed a sizeable force against Houthi rebels. Libyan forces under command of General Haftar would also join the war on behalf of the Allied Powers. Haftar had heavily relied on support from France, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Chad and other countries and some of them having certain roles. As an example, the UAE has shipped weapons to help Haftar's forces against Government of National Accord forces. Sub-Saharan countries of Chad, Niger and Mali would join on side of the Allied Powers with military attacks against Algeria and send supplies to aid Haftar's forces. Mali was found under attack by pro-Beijing Power countries Burkina Faso and Ghana and insurgent group Boko Haram. Mali would only join as protection by the Allied Powers as it hosts German, French, British and American forces against Al Qaeda forces. South Sudan joined due to continued Sudanese aggression when it sided with the Beijing Powers in where South Sudan and Sudan have clashed in previous conflicts. Kenya, Ethiopia, Cote d Ivoire, Togo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Djibouti, and Liberia joined the Allied Powers only to stop Beijing Powers' influence due to their strong connections with countries like the US and depend on economic aid from the west. Uganda joined the Allied Powers along with Burundi and Rwanda due to having economic links with the United States. Uganda also part of the East African Union (EAU) teamed with South Sudan against the main combatant, the DR Congo. Tanzania, an ally of Uganda supported South Africa, Botswana and Namibia in a campaign against Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Namibia had joined to help South Africa open a front against Angola which had allowed DR Congo, Slavonic Corps troops, Wagner Group forces and Chinese mercenaries to cross into the country and gear up for an invasion of Namibia and South Africa. South Africa, despite being apart of the BRICS, broke its alliance with China and Russia. The Republic of Congo was dragged into the conflict although it declared neutrality at first. The DR Congo sent ultimatums and made ominous threats for the Republic of Congo to be annexed by DR Congo. When those ultimatums were refused, Republic of Congo went to war despite opposition by its population. The African front in all was one of the other deadliest fronts in the war itself seeing loss of wildlife, forest fires, disease and massacres.

South America and Central America: Mexico was neutral at first. They sent an expeditionary force to Europe along with Brazil since they have strong ties with the west. When a Russian and Chinese invasion hit North America, Mexico was targeted with Russian forces landing in Baja California, Mexico officially joined the war. Brazil also broke its ties with BRICS like South Africa and India. Although not officially joining the war, they sent an expeditionary force to Europe to the Italian front in Lombardia. When Venezuela invaded Guyana, Colombia and Brazil were the first countries to officially join the war as part of the Allied Powers. Soon on, most of South America including island countries in the Caribbean like the Bahamas. Brazil and Colombia's goal was to overthrow Maduro's regime and prevent his dictatorship from spreading throughout Latin America. When Mexico was invaded, the rest of Latin America began sending forces towards Baja California to help the retreating Mexican forces. The Bahamas, like Republic of Congo, declared neutrality as it saw no purpose when the war broke out. Cuba's invasion would then forcefully align Bahamas with the Allied Powers. This would later result in a US invasion of Cuba to free the Bahamas. El Salvador, Belize, Guatemala, Panama and Costa Rica would join the Allied Powers due to traditional economic alliances including being supported by major powers in the Cold War. Chile, Argentina and Peru joined the war after Uruguay and Bolivia joined the Beijing Powers and the trio of countries including Brazil would deploy as much firepower as they could to stop any action from getting out of hand.

Revolutionist Powers:
Europe: Russia would be the dominant power of the Revolutionist Powers in Europe under president Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Russia's army had trouble keeping itself maintained as dominant power after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and independence of many countries. They lost their naval bases in the Baltics, Kaliningrad was cut off from Russia as it bordered 3 independent countries. They only have 1 aircraft carrier in their navy, the Admiral Kuznetsov as other carriers like the Minsk and Novorossiysk were decommissioned or sold for scrap. Putin had the urge to reunite countries that were part of the Soviet Union and force the rest of Europe to recognize countries like Lithuania, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Estonia and Latvia as territories of a new Russia but would spiral out of control into a so called "Second Cold War" between NATO and Russia. Russia would also engage in various propaganda campaigns as well as tampering with the 2016 presidential election despite the Mueller Investigation finding no proof of Trump and Putin colluding with the 2016 election. Russia who was hoping for a destabilization and eventual collapse of the European Union would back right-wing movements throughout Europe which was mostly successful. Russia did have a weakness as they only have 3 countries that support Russia in Europe. Belarus, a traditional Russian ally had strong ties with dictator, Alexander Lukashenko being backed by Putin and that Belarus was in several alliances like the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization), Union State and CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States). Belarus joined letting forces from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan through their homeland and with their own forces launching joint offensives in Europe. Another important ally for Russia being Serbia. Serbia held a grudge against NATO after the Yugoslav Wars where NATO supported rebel groups against Serbian government forces. Serbia would later see combat in the Balkans and recreating it's unified state in the Balkans and annexing Albania and parts of Greece. Armenia who was now siding with Russia joined the Beijing Powers due to unresolved conflicts with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Middle East: The main country leading forces in the Middle East was Iran. A Shia Muslim country led by the Iranian Mullah Regime set up in 1979. Iran was engaged in a series of proxy wars against Saudi Arabia and Israel which would build up tensions to World War Three. Iran's Nuclear Program was what would build up the tensions and that it threatened countries like the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain. Many did suspect that Iran's Nuclear Program was to obtain nuclear weapons to boost their military. Iran's economy had been tanking due to Trump's sanctions because of the nuclear program. Once the sanctions were lifted with the Iran Nuclear Deal, Iran would continue the development of nuclear weapons, Trump would abandon the deal which would increase hostility between Iran and the US. Iran would then tamper with supply lines by seizing tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and outside the Omani and Emirati coast.

Iran also supported various militias in the Middle East supporting Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia fighting in both Lebanon and Syria, Hamas fighting in Palestine and Houthis fighting in Yemen and various other militias. Bashar Al Assad who was also supported by Iran would lead to clashes increasing between Israel and Syrian government forces. Iran was one of the founders of the Beijing Powers and was one of the last ones to leave due to the Saudi-led coalition invasion and a bloody coup that would see the Iranian Mullah Regime overthrown. Syria would join the Beijing Powers while government forces supported by the Russian air force would clash with remnants of the Free Syrian Army, Kurdish Rojava, ISIS remnants and Israel. Syria was one of the main proxy conflicts where it caused one of the biggest refugee crisis of the 2000s and saw the first use of chemical weapons since World War I. When the war broke out, Syria would soon control 90% of territory owned by the FSA, ISIS and other insurgents with support from Russian and Iranian forces. Iraq would join the Beijing Powers and call for the removal of coalition forces from their territory. Trump and Biden would later call Iraq the Iranian puppet. This would lead to the Saudi-led invasion of Iraq with Iran deploying chemical gas. Iraq would also seize coalition bases in its territory and would allow Russia and Iran to deploy troops in Baghdad including Iraqi parliament to expel any remaining US troops and would result in Iraq becoming one of America's 10 enemies. Lebanon would be on both sides despite having mostly a huge presence of Hezbollah fighters, the Lebanese Front who supported Israel, would challenge Hezbollah and the Amal Movement. Lebanon would be pressured to join the Beijing Powers but it refused the ultimatum saying it's a threat to it's freedom. Houthi fighters would side with the Revolutionist Powers as they would see aid from Iran, China and Russia during their campaign in Yemen. The Palestinian Territories would join the Beijing Powers after Iran began sending money, weapons, ammo and diplomatic support to their cause and sending advisors to train the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas. Palestine would clash with Israel in campaigns and rebellion attacks against IDF Forces. Israel would be forced to give Palestine independence due to Allied pressure.

Central Asia: The Central Asian countries of former Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan would side with the Revolutionist Powers due to their membership in the CSTO, CIS and SCO and would allow China and Russia to cross troops to countries like Iran and Pakistan. Afghanistan is forced to join the Revolutionist Powers despite having diplomatic ties with the United States. The Taliban would take Kabul and the Afghan government would flee for the United States. The Taliban would then rebuild the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which was originally set up in 1996. From there, the Taliban-controlled government would then join the Beijing Powers and allow for Russian and Chinese troops to move across and set up bases in the country's mountains. Pakistan continued to fund the Taliban and that alone would make the new Afghanistan join the Beijing Powers. Afghanistan would send a small force up to a token force of 690 troops to Pakistan to reinforce the front in Pakistan. Pakistan, a traditional Chinese ally, would be on of the few countries that founded the Revolutionist Powers and because of their membership in the SCO and that the US has accused Pakistan of supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Pakistani, Turkmen, Afghan, Kyrgyzstani and Uzbekistani conscripts would partake in a campaign against India that would see brutal fighting until 2027 when Indian soldiers marched on Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

North Asia: The main power and leader of the Revolutionist Powers would be China which was beginning to become the next superpower against the United States. China would also possess the 3rd strongest army in manpower. Ruled by Xi Jinping, China became part of the modern militarization with increased manpower since the Cold War and with the Belt Road Initiative already underway. China has gained influence around the world especially in Africa. China would also have plans to expand as their overpopulation problem is just getting worst. China does claim Taiwan, Hong Kong and the South China Sea as their own and China was the main one responsible for most of the war crimes committed during the war. While it did conquer what it could push over, it had, China had a harsh trouble keeping their occupied territories in firm grip. Revolts in captured territories like Taiwan and Hong Kong would keep China from conquering territories that would've been easy. When the war went on and with the Revolutionist Powers losing land, riots and protests would erupt in China. Even with the war crimes being committed, Xi Jinping and China's Communist Party's image was tarnished. With Russia retreating and unrest growing in China, Tibetan Freedom Fighters and Uyghur Resistance would rise up and put pressure on China which would force the CCP to retreat on all fronts. The Pyongyang Treaty would give Chinese territories that were held by China independent. This had the result of a failed China that lost it's military capability and economic capabilities too while losing the trust of Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan after Xi Jinping's neglection of his allies became public. This turmoil spilled out of control leading to the destabilization China and ultimately, the Second Chinese Civil War. North Korea would join the Revolutionist Powers due to friendly ties with Russia and China including increased tensions with South Korea, Japan and the United States. Despite tensions looking at ease with the Singapore Summit of 2018, North Korea would still test nuclear weapons in the Sea of Japan. North Korea at the beginning of the war, would see gains in South Korea as the ROK army wasn't prepared thinking that the line up of North Korean troops was a demonstration. They would later be pushed back outside of Seoul after the ROK army reorganized. US, Japanese, Filipino, Australian and New Zealand forces would later force North Korea to fall back to the DMZ but would still be pursued. By the time 2027 rolled around, North Korea had fallen with Kim Jong Un committing suicide. Other Asian countries would join the Beijing Powers due to their strong ties with China and to retain independence. Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, former ASEAN members defected to the Beijing Powers as their strong ties with China and military equipment consisting of now mostly Chinese equipment and to prevent being annexed by China would reluctantly join. Laos and Cambodia wouldn't last long as their armies are weak and that they are heavily dependent on China incase something went wrong. Myanmar would have to content with Indian and Thai troops on its soil and with it in an unstable state and different insurgent groups all around its soil, Myanmar would have to be on full damage control. Nepal and Sri Lanka would join the Beijing Powers since they wanted neutrality as they are both part of the Belt Road Initiative and joined for economic benefits. China would see them as good forward operating bases to deploy forces. Mongolia having close ties with Russia and China would join the Beijing Powers and send forces to North Korea to reinforce the line. Mongolia wouldn't get harsh terms when the treaty would roll around. Africa: Before World War 3, Russia and China had managed to gain influence in areas of Africa as both are the biggest producer and salesman of weapons. Sudan, DR Congo and Zimbabwe were convinced to join the Revolutionist Powers and conducted attacks and acts of sabotage against countries allied with the Allied Powers. Algeria, a traditional Russian ally would engage Morocco with unresolved tensions over Western Sahara. The Polisario Front who was an ally of Algeria would join the war and would pressure Morocco when sending troops. The Western Sahara would also carry out acts of espionage and guerilla attacks against Morocco and Mauritania. Libya under GNA forces would join the Revolutionist Powers with an earlier partnership with Russia and with respective conflicts with opposing factions supported by the United States and France. Angola, Zambia, Mozambique, Madagascar, Eritrea, Somalia, Ghana, Benin, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic and Burkina Faso would also join the Beijing Powers with respective trade and partnerships with Russia and China. They would act as forward bases for Slavonic Corps and Wagner Group forces. Madagascar played an important role as they would act as a major FOB and base hub for Wagner Group and Slavonic Corps troops and provide aircraft for China. Sudan reluctantly aligned with the Beijing Powers as they condemned UN forces in South Sudan and claimed that the UN forces were occupying rightful Sudanese territory. Sudan would pull out of the Saudi-led coalition. The African theatre of WWIII was one of the only theatres of the war to see extensive use of mercenaries, increased mortality rates in several countries, disease loss of wildlife and biological warfare. The aftermath left several African nations who sided with the Beijing Powers were left in a tarnished state where they would've collapsed under their own weight. The DR Congo suffered more uprisings by radical groups, Angola was in such disarray that a joint South African Namibian and Botswanan occupation along the Cubango River, Sierra Leone and Guinea suffered increased death through infections and Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Madagascar had suffered increased poverty.Latin America: Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Bolivia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis, Uruguay and Venezuela were the only countries to join the Revolutionist Powers. Venezuela had joined because of traditional partnership and trade with Russia and China and which was one of the reasons that Venezuela joined the Beijing Powers. Venezuela would seize ships leaving countries like Brazil, Mexico, Bahamas and Colombia and bring whatever cargo the ship had. When Venezuela joined the war, they invaded Guyana to gain resources as seizing the ships 2019 Persian Gulf style wasn't enough. Venezuela had authorized for Tu-95 bombers and Xian H-6 bombers on its soil in performing bombings on southern Florida and the Bahamas. Maduro feared that it might bring unwanted invasion by the US. Cuba, a traditionally ally of Russia immediately sided with the Beijing Powers at the start of the war but unlike Venezuela, denied bombers on Cuban airports. Cuba would launch attacks on the Bahamas as a diversion for the US forces heading for Europe, Middle East and Asia. Cuba would ultimately fall in a matter of days during the war. Honduras joined the war in supporting Nicaragua and joined during Biden's retreat in Europe and the Middle East. The Allied blockade enforced by Joe Biden on Honduras along with a collapsing government and corrupt system, Russia and China exploited this with sending money, weapons and advisors to Honduras and aligning it with the Beijing Powers with the population of Honduras in an outcry for Biden to withdraw the blockade.

Non-state and mercenary combatants:
The two major alliances who fought against each other in WW3, had also witnessed support from non-state combatants that tried to influence the war on the behalf of their respected allies. The big international alliances aside from non-state and mercenary combatants that tried to benefit from the war, most of these were terrorist groups despite having support from both sides in order for them to use their supporters to their advantage. But among some of these Islamist terrorist groups, were Hezbollah, Taliban, Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nursa, ISIS, Al-Shabbab and etc. While ISIS played the insignificant role, they had to reconsolidate what was left of their forces after losing precious territory in 2017. ISIS would later cease to exist as armies from both factions began to combat each other. Hezbollah, PLO, Hamas, Houthi and Al Qaeda would still manage to be with the Beijing Powers until the conflict ended despite Hezbollah not lasting long in Lebanon. Islamic territory would largely vanish by the end of the entire conflict itself. Kurdish fighters also engaged in the conflict due to Syrian, Iranian and Iraqi forces attacking their territory and that the YPG had seen a backstabbing by Iran after Syria and Iran made an agreement for offensives on Kurdish territory and leading towards the Massacre of Sinjar and Kurdish Genocide. While Kurdish YPG, PKK and other groups were beginning to lean to the Revolutionist Powers, they would end up joining the Allies as Turkey had agreed to withdraw from Kurdish territories in Syria and only attack Syrian forces. Rebel groups also became involved like the Luhansk and Donetsk rebels supported by Russia, Houthi rebels supported by Iran, Free Syrian Army rebels supported by the GCC, Israel, Turkey, United States and NATO, Taiwanese resistance secretly backed by the United States, Hong Kong resistance fighters supported by ASEAN, Uyghur and Tibet rebels backed by NATO during the invasion of China, Gurkha rebels supported by the CIA and uprising movements supported by the US. Both factions would also see the support from mercenary groups that saw combat in Yemen, Africa and Libya on behalf of their allies. Among these mercenary groups were Russia's Slavonic Corps, Wagner Group, British Aegis mercenaries and Sandline International, Peru's Defion Internacional, South Africa's Executive Outcomes, unknown Chinese PMCs and US Academi mercenary and G4S mercenaries. The Wagner Group and Slavonic Corps would assist the DR Kongo, GNA, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia in Africa by providing advisors and military combat support while unidentified Chinese PMCs would back Ghana, Benin, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone and Guinea with fighting Mali. Academi mercenaries would see intense combat in Yemen with the Saudi coalition taking part in the Sana'a offensive. Defion Internacional PMCs would be deployed with South Africa and Namibian troops in Angola supporting the breach of the Cubango River. Executive Outcomes would play a part in invading Mozambique helping the SADF gain a good foothold in southern Mozambique but would see numerous losses. The same would happen with Sandline International with their deployment in Norway and G4S members killed in Iraq. Mercenaries would play a huge part in supporting their allies and would soon form Task Force Global Security Pact.

The Outbreak: Ukraine War
Following several summits like the Singapore Summit in 2018 and several talks with China not having reached an official end in 2021, in January of 2022, Biden originally had plans for the withdrawal of several US battlegroups from vulnerable nations like the Baltics but under pressure from Emmanuel Macron and Jens Stoltenberg including Angela Merkel, Biden would be forced to retain the battlegroups in Europe. Yet again, his presidency would be questioned for moves like this and his adversaries like Russia and China and would also see increased political aggression by countries like North Korea and Iran with threats to attack foreign US bases with missile strikes. When Russian forces moved to the border of Ukraine, this would see more increased sanctions from a contingency of US allies including Saudi Arabia and Morocco. But with humiliating acts since his election like the withdrawal from Afghanistan, US popularity for Biden began to drop at a rapid pace. In order to reverse the trend, Biden began enacting military exercises with NATO allies even including countries in Africa, Middle East and Asia which increased the hostility between the CSTO and NATO. In retaliation, Kim Jong Un would reintroduce long-range ICBM testing as a provocation to test Biden's reaction and believed that Biden would say he react, but he wouldn't react at all. Biden including Scott Morison of Australia, Jacinda Ardren, Naruhito and Moon Jae-in to place hardened sanctions on North Korea and increased military forces stationed in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and ASEAN countries not counting Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. This military exercise would be called, Able Archer II. China and the CSTO began military drills with several of their allies in preparations in the likelihood of the war itself as well as showing a show of strength of force. By February 27th, 2022, both sides were armed and ready for the conflict in all. The 3rd World War generally began on March 2nd, 2022 when a Russian armored battalion consisting of T-14 Armatas, T-90s, T-80s and BMPTs would engage several Ukrainian border regiments along the border with Crimea with the US launching Tomahawk strikes against Russian, Chinese and North Korean facilities following a provocative ICBM launch by a small ICBM team in Chongjin after mistaking it for an attack committed by US carrier groups in the East Japan Sea. During the same day, the PLA Navy and Russian Navy launched a naval exercise in the South China Sea to demonstrate to Biden that the Sino-Russian partnership and the Beijing Powers was directly aimed at toppling US influence.

This result of the strikes and exercises would result in the Ukraine War with the US and NATO on one side and Russia on another. After the missile attacks on the US, Russia said it was intended to be a "strike-in-the-thigh", Russian ASMs began to fire against US ships in the Black Sea forcing US carrier groups in the Black Sea to conduct air raids against the ASM batteries in Sevastopol and Crimean coastline. Russian forces would later begin shelling the Ukrainian border and launch air raids against cities like Kiev inflicting civilian casualties which brought condemnation from the EU, Turkey, NATO, the United States and Saudi Arabia. Despite Ukrainian forces near the borders of Russia and Belarus, their preemptive moves were versatile as Russian forces began crossing the border and into Ukraine. Countries all over the world had the fear of the conflict spilling into other regions and turning into a global conflict. Several EU members, most notably, Czech Republic and Germany called for a diplomatic solution and a non-desire to get involved in the conflict while countries like Romania, Turkey, France, UK and Canada began mobilizing men to be sent to Ukraine in a few days. Austria, Switzerland and Ireland began offers to mediate between Ukraine and Russia. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Biden Administration had began to denounce any criticism for their actions and instead demanded total support from their allies. On the ground, with Canadian, Turkish, Romanian, British, French and US forces arriving in Ukraine, the main goal of NATO's counterattack in Ukraine is to contain the Russians while leaving the bulk of forces in Kiev. The US 1st Armored Cavalry Division and 1st Armored Division were the first US reinforcements of the war but are accompanied by the 4th Infantry and 7th Infantry Division. Because of the air raids on Kiev and the capital having the biggest population in Ukraine, many civilians died in the few hours after the aircraft dropped the bombs. The Russian air force wasn't able to scramble every Tu-95 it could during NATO's counterattack but had managed to inflict heavy damage on Ukrainian forces before any reinforcements could arrive. Russian forces and Donetsk and Luhansk rebels break the line in eastern Ukraine and Ukrainian forces fighting the Belarusian forces fall back with another collapsing line. The fresh reinforcements from Romania, Turkey, Britain, France, Canadian and US began moving towards the Russian forces and rebel forces establishing multiple defensive lines. One in Korosten with Romanian and British forces using the nearby towns and buildings for cover. The second in Mykolaiv with Turkish and French forces preparing for a Russian onslaught. A third one in Dnipro with US and Canadian forces. Italy, Spain, Portugal and Poland broke their neutrality and began sending battlegroups for Ukraine. French, British, Canadian, US, Czechian, Slovakian and Bulgarian forces move up towards Poland, Ukraine and Germany preparing for a possible Russian invasion. US, German, Canadian and British forces begin to patrol the Baltics increasing security and the number of troops in the event of a Russian invasion force. Norwegian aircraft begin patrol over Russian waters with the US sending mechanized divisions to Iceland as reservist forces. In the Black Sea, Russian aircraft from Rostov-On-Don and Sevastopol attempted to hit as many US ships as possible to prevent more infrastructure being damaged. Yet, the Russian aircraft are shot down as Chaparral and Hawk missiles stationed on the US destroyers allowed them to shoot down huge numbers of Russian aircraft. While NATO forces began to actively defend in Ukraine, Russian forces enter Poland and Lithuania with the Russians launching hacking attacks against NATO satellites to blind NATO recon satellites and allow for the invasion to go quicker. However, NATO forces had already launched defensive maneuvers with the Russian invasion underway. Nonetheless, Russian forces begin to steamroll into the Baltics and Poland with NATO being caught off guard. US, British, Danish and German ships move to the Baltic Sea which would provoke the Russian navy from St. Petersburg. As ships from the US, British, Danish and German navies began to move closer to the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian coast, Russia threatened to retaliate by launching ASM strikes on the German navy. Su-34s, Su-35s, KA-27PLs and MiG-29s from Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg begin to launch attacks sinking many ships from the Royal Navy and Danish Navy. The US navy, risks to lose what powerful ships they have. They pull back to Danish waters to stay away from any Russian intervention. Water mines are laid on the shores of the Baltic coast preventing any naval reinforcements from arriving. As a result, NATO had to fly in reinforcements which takes time. While infantry can arrive by air in a few hours, it takes longer for heavy equipment as it has to be strapped down correctly and has to fit before taking off. In Exmouth, Australia, it was reported that the screens went dark for 19 hours before it got rebooted. The US accused China and Russia for the hacking attack and retaliated shutting down local Russian servers. Russian aircraft flying near the US naval groups in the Black Sea began to buzz US ships. The US retaliated with F-14 Tomcats, F-15s, F-16s and F-22s downing several Russian aircraft. Russia and the CSTO, outraged, demanded for all NATO operations to be halted with an ultimatum demanding all NATO forces leave the Baltics, Poland and Ukraine. The ultimatum is refused and the Italian navy and the Turkish navy join the US carrier groups in the Black Sea engaging the Russian navy and sinking several ships. After another ignored ultimatum, this time by China, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Ali Khamenei and Kim Jong Un, declare war on the United States and their allies.

The conflict spills everywhere
While Iran had only joined after the attack on the Russian ships, they began to harass civilian shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. While the 1st and 2nd North Korean armies enter South Korea but only to be repelled by the South Korean army and US forces supported by Australian, New Zealand, Filipino and Japanese reinforcements. North Korean forces would be pushed out of the DMZ and near Seoul. The Chinese 79th and 80th armies enter North Korea to push back coalition forces. But with British and French support, the US begins to clash with the Iranians in the Persian Gulf following strikes launched by Iranian ASM launchers on Qeshm Island. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Israel declared their full support for the United States followed by Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan and Oman, should Iran declare war against the Saudi-led coalition. In Moscow, the Russian White House and the Duma exploded with massive anti-NATO hate after the increased casualties in Europe and Syria after US Tomahawk strikes against Russian targets in Syria hit the air and naval base in Tartus, Syria. Putin warned that if NATO fails to withdraw from Asia, Middle East and Eastern Europe, any participating country on behalf of the United States will be invaded with no one giving mercy. This was seen in Putin and Xi Jinping's eyes as a de-escalation move as they thought it would make NATO and their allies back down and it anticipated that the United States and NATO would meet Russia's demands before the war had even started only having minor skirmishes. Despite Joe Biden and Kamala Harris calling for peaceful solutions, General Jens Stoltenberg, Emmanuel Macron, Andrzej Duda, Boris Johnson and Volodymyr Zelensky declared that NATO and their allies will refuse to stand down. The Beijing Powers began to prepare for full attacks not just on the US and NATO, but their allies too. An emergency meeting is hosted in Seattle, Washington, USA with NATO members, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Japan, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Australia, Vietnam, ASEAN, GCC, and EU members to discuss the current situation and how to react to the escalation. In Asia, the hostilities have grown out of control. More Chinese and North Korean deaths are counted in the Korean Peninsula due to continued clashes between China and North Korea and the US coalition. Meanwhile in the Middle East, the hostilities had been failed to be contained and casualties between proxy groups in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq backed by the GCC and Iran began to stack up and forced Iran to resort to more aggressive stances against the GCC, Israel and the United States. Iranian speedboats and helicopters began to seize civilian shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and the Omani and Emirati coasts. A Norwegian container ship off the Emirati coast is seized by Iranian forces. Emirati troops are dispatched to retake the ship to protect it's coastline sending aircraft to disperse any Iranian helicopters. Iranian forces are dispatched from the ship. This would generally be the first GCC's engagements with Iranian forces on the seas instead of land. Iranian speedboats instead turn their focus to harassing US ships in hoping that military reinforcements will be slowed and Iran can make gains and force Saudi Arabia, GCC and Israel to leave the war. Iranian-backed militias conducted new offensives gaining ground in Iraq taking US territory in the process and making the US lose foothold in Iraq. The US retaliated with drone strikes on Baghdad airport with Iranian forces already flooding into Iraq. Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United Arab Emirates sent an ultimatum demanding that removal of Iranian forces from Syria and Iraq be done immediately or else action would take place. Iran ignores the ultimatum, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, Jordan, United States, Kuwait, Bahrain and United Kingdom declare war on Iran, Iraq and Syria. Qatar and Oman were pressured to join Saudi Arabia as well. Egypt joined the Saudi-led coalition. When Jordanian and Israeli forces entered Syria, Lebanon who had been dominated by Hezbollah, joined Iran and began a slow guerilla warfare campaign against the IDF with increased rocket strikes on Israeli cities. Despite the US withdrawing from Syria in 2019, they had extra forces to deploy from Diego Garcia to help the Arab armies counter Russian, Iranian, Syrian and Iraqi forces. US, Emirati, Kuwaiti, Qatari, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian and Jordanian forces invaded Iraq opening a land front in Iraq. With extra US reinforcements arriving in Iraq, Iran and Iraq had demanded the withdrawal of GCC and US forces. Joe Biden would ultimately call Iraq the Iranian puppet state. The Strait of Hormuz quickly becomes a flashpoint with the war as the US navy supported by the UAE navy and Omani navy sink several Russian and Iranian naval vessels. Israel launches several offensives in southern Lebanon. Iranian, Russian and Iraqi forces begin to besiege US bases in southern Iraq and began to take surrendering US soldiers as prisoners while Iranian forces began to attack the US base in Baghdad with additional attacks against Saudi-coalition's foothold in Iraq. French forces in Camp de la Paix in the United Arab Emirates supported by Australian, Canadian and British air forces in Al Minhad Airbase and Al Dhafra airbase, are sent through the Persian Gulf and into Iraq supporting Saudi-led coalition attacks while stopping Iraqi attacks in Basra. Iran retaliates with a volley of ballistic missiles on US bases in Kuwait, oil fields in Saudi Arabia and launched more gunboat attacks on US ships and began harassing oil tankers bound for Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE and Oman. NATO's only member in the region, Turkey was forcefully dragged into the conflict after their declaration of war on Syria. Turkey had been unofficially at war with Syria since 2016 after Operation Euphrates Shield targeting ISIS forces at first. Turkey's participation in Syria would also see the Turkish Armed Forces combating militia groups supported by Iran. Turkey had already been eying up the events in Syria and Iraq and considering whether join the war or continue in Europe. Instead, Saudi, Israeli and Turkish diplomats met up for a secret-collaboration pact. Turkey would agree that they would stop harming Kurdish fighters in Syria and only attack Iraqi and Syrian territory. In exchange, Saudi financial aid would go to Turkey and the IDF help train the Turkish Armed Forces helping strengthen NATO, GCC and Israeli ties. In the meantime, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan join the war on China's side declaring their support against NATO's "imperialist" ambitions. Mongolia joins sending several divisions to North Korea while Russia and China began to pressure SCO members to join the war against NATO incase of a NATO interference against China. With the US mobilizing in larger numbers, Belarus began mobilizing for war and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan begin sending droves of soldiers to Belarus and Russia to aid in the fighting in Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Poland. NATO allies in the Balkans declared their full support along with Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo, Sweden and Finland. During this, Russia sent several Il-76 transport planes, Tupolev 160 bombers and ships for a newly constructed base in Venezuela. China deploys the 188th Combined Arms Brigade and several ships for Venezuela to bolster Venezuela's military. After Russian and Chinese assets began to continue to flood into North Korea, aircraft carriers in Korean waters were forced to retreat to nearby Japanese waters as Chinese naval assets from Qingdao began to arrive. The Holy See of Vatican state condemned the growing violence in Europe, Middle East and Asia and demanded a total end to the conflict for the sake of mankind.

Europe: The Russian onslaught
While Russian forces had been fighting in the Baltics and Poland, NATO had been constantly halting Russia's advance leading the armies to almost go head-to-head with each other on a high scale. At the same time, Kazakh, Kyrgyzstani, Uzbek and Tajikistani forces began to arrive in Belarus and Russia with large-scale military operations before being sent to the Polish and Ukrainian fronts. With CSTO forces now steamrolling into Ukraine, NATO general, Jens Stoltenberg realizes he has to take a decision. Either fall back from Ukraine completely and have Romania and Moldova threatened or redirect battlegroups for the Baltics and have Poland exposed on several flanks. Stoltenberg orders for armored divisions to head to Poland amid the Russian armored offensive and have mechanized infantry be sent to the Baltics. Russian and Belarusian forces engaged in heavy combat with Baltic defenders who had to constantly retreat as key areas were already falling and with reinforcements arriving from CSTO members, Baltic forces were forced to retreat constantly but began to lose grip on their own land. NATO would soon realize it would be Russia's plan to cutoff the Baltics and with their navy, occupy the Baltic Sea and soon turn on Poland. NATO soldiers in the Baltics were assisted by mechanized infantry groups against invading CSTO forces. British and Canadian forces in Latvia and Estonia began to engage Russian forces already steamrolling through. During the joint attack on Lithuania by Russian and Belarusian forces, German and American forces under constant aerial attacks and with 90% of their forces destroyed, they are forced to retreat opening up a gap in the Baltic lines. Meanwhile, up north, Russian forces launch a full-on assault on the Norwegian city of Kirkenes to protect the naval bases in Murmansk, Polyarny, Kola and Severomorsk while sending forces into Finland to protect the naval base in St. Petersburg. Russia had declared this as they never expected Finland to retaliate. Finland responds with an AGM-158 JASSM missile strike into St. Petersburg as an act of retaliation. Despite the missile going off-course, it caused panic in St. Petersburg itself. This would be the first time St. Petersburg would be attacked since the Second World War. VDV groups are dropped all over Finland to cut off Finnish reinforcement routes and encircle Finnish forces around Helsinki. VDV forces are dropped on the Finnish Aland Islands giving more control over the Gulf of Finland. Polish forces desperately try to push back the ongoing attacks in their mainland and with the Ukrainian-Polish border cutoff, Polish and NATO forces are forced to fall back under the constant air bombardment. With the German border, under threat, Angela Merkel is pressured by Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron to join the war and reinforce the line in Poland. Merkel obliges and Germany officially declares war on Russia sending immediate response forces for Poland reinforced by fresh forces from France, Belgium, Denmark, UK and Spain. But during the battles, Russia launched a strike campaign against NATO forces not only in Poland, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Poland, but also neutral Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands striking railroads, bridges, airports and docks. Germany and Denmark suffered the most damage as they had homed NATO naval, air and ground bases and logistical roads that could move armies within weeks. Russian aircraft from Sevastopol begin launching airstrikes on the missile defense systems in Bucharest, Romania. Ramstein Airbase, EUCOM Headquarters, Antwerp port, the port of Gdansk, Arhus, NATO command center of Ulm, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and La Rochelle are heavily damaged by the Russian attacks and severely weaken the NATO supply lines and allowing for Russian forces to launch more offensives against NATO forces in Scandinavia, Baltics, Ukraine and Poland. These preemptive strikes were to disrupt NATO's preparations during the invasion of Poland and Ukraine. During these strikes, 200 American personnel, 500 German Bundeswehr personnel and a total of 60 aircraft, 20 being transport aircraft would be destroyed following these attacks. Sweden, Iceland, Slovenia and Greece declared their support for NATO and declared war on Russia for these attacks. Croatia and Albania would declare war on Russia days after the strikes on Germany and other European countries but had been held back due to pro-Russian governments. Slovenia, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia and North Macedonia also joined the war against Russia but only declaring for logistic support while Hungary began sending troops to Poland. The full-on combat in Europe saw Armenia reluctantly join the conflict and declare war on NATO and the Untied States. Pakistan and Afghanistan (under Taliban rule) joined the war against the United States leaving India as the only remaining SCO member remaining neutral. Meanwhile, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Slovenia and Slovakia had broken their neutrality and had joined the war and begin sending reinforcements to Poland. Back in Ukraine, the NATO lines collapse and remaining forces fall back to Kiev. Moldova joins the war as a NATO ally and begins sending a small force for Kiev. Swedish forces attempted to move divisions to Turku and Helsinki but because of Russian VDV divisions taking hold of the Finnish-Swedish border, Sweden is unable to provide reinforcements to the Finnish. Russian airstrikes had also destroyed the ports, tunnels and bridges preventing Swedish reinforcements from arriving. Svalbard is heavily bombarded by the Russian Northern Fleet. Due to the strikes, this prompted NATO to retaliate with Tomahawk and JDAM strikes on Russian ports in Murmansk and Severomorsk. The Russian advance in Norway is halted along Alta with Dutch, French, British, newly arrived Canadian troops and US forces reinforce the Norwegian forces. Russian forces dig in into the mountains and terrain to keep Murmansk protected. Back in Poland, Kazakh, Belarusian and Russian forces begin a wide encircling maneuver taking Bialystok and Allenstien threatening Warsaw.

Meanwhile in the Caucasus, Georgia joined the allies, and started its own campaign to retake the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which were occupied by Russia since the Georgia War at the beginning of the 2000s. Armenia concentrated its forces on its border with Georgia, demanding the end of hostilities in the Caucasus mountains in favor of Russia. In the same time, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan besieged the US bases in their territories, forcing American soldiers to surrender after two weeks, despite marginal support from the US air-force. Serbian volunteers were smuggled into Ukraine to assist Russian forces attacking Ukraine while Russian forces began training Transnistrian rebels in the rouge Moldovan territory and began financing Abkhazia and South Ossetia and sending advisors to train the rebels. After the Battle of the Sea of Azov, which resulted in total Ukrainian defeat, eastern Ukraine was completely cut off from any supplies from the sea, while Russia started an invasion of the Donbass. They received support from the Donbass rebels from the self proclaimed republics of Luhansk and Donetsk, who fought on Russian behalf against Ukrainian forces for years, and with the full scale invasion of eastern Ukraine, president Volodymyr Zelensky had to retreat his troops back into central Ukraine, while also facing Belarusian attacks in the northwest.

The Asian Front: The Dragon strikes
At the Asian Theatre, South Korean forces are taken by complete surprise with Chinese and North Korean forces entering South Korea JSDF forces send extra reinforcements to South Korea supported by American, Australian, New Zealand, Filipino and a small contingent of British forces. US-led forces established a secondary defense along the Bukhan River and began reconsolidating. The North Korean navy attempted to strike as many Allied ships to hinder their numbers and limit the forces pouring into South Korea. Nonetheless, US-led forces overran North Korean forces and heavy fighting began in Seoul and Incheon. Chinese and Russian forces tried to intervene with naval strikes on Allied ships bound for Korea. China had also been engaged with the United States in a trade war along with an arms race development on massive scales since the Cold War. Chinese frigates near the Parcel Islands and Hong Kong began to actively harass US ships in the South China Sea. During these strikes, the tensions escalated faster than ever with the PLA Navy and Russian Navy trying to deny access for ASEAN and US counterparts. Daring battles began to take place between the US Navy and PLA Navy. The USS Harry S. Truman rammed into a Russian Tarantul III corvette after ignoring warning fire and coming too close to the carrier itself after trying to sink a Filipino merchant ship. The corvette sunk with all Russian sailors dying. Russian leader, Vladimir Putin and Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov demanded that the US apologize for the sinking and demanded that all forces withdraw from the following countries:


 * United Kingdom
 * South Korea
 * United Arab Emirates
 * France
 * Japan
 * Belgium
 * Germany
 * Kosovo
 * Kuwait
 * Greece
 * Djibouti
 * Italy
 * Kenya
 * Ukraine
 * Romania
 * Turkey
 * Saudi Arabia
 * Iraq
 * Syria
 * Qatar
 * Israel
 * Spain
 * Bahrain
 * Oman
 * Egypt
 * Morocco
 * Portugal
 * Norway
 * Denmark

As well as a reparation of 500,000 Russian Rubles (6,865.00 US Dollars). The US refuses saying that it defends the decision and saying that they will retaliate with brute force. While US-led forces began to actively defend Seoul, cyber attacks were launched with several having their screens go dark for a full 48 hours until it was rebooted. The US backed by NATO countries, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Israel, United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Taiwan, ASEAN, Australia, New Zealand and Egypt condemned the attack. The US retaliated with hacking attacks on Russian and Chinese government infrastructure and took out several local servers. China retaliated with submarine warfare slowing down Allied ships bound for Korea on a massive scale since Germany's U-boat tactics in WW1 and WW2. Russian aircraft from Vladivostok began launching bombing raids on Sapporo with Chinese Xian H-6 bombers launching raids on Kumamoto, Okinawa, Kagoshima and Fukuoka. The US and Japan attempted to retaliate with strikes on the Chinese city of Qingdao and costal targets. These raids are failed as Chinese costal AA defenses wipe out many bombers and escort aircraft in the process. The PLA amassed their forces and began landing in Taiwan due to claims made back in the Cold War and it's strategical position in the South China Sea. The PLA armada is severely hampered by US naval assets air strikes from the USS Harry S. Truman. Taiwan joins the war and begins mobilizing the population. PLA marines began to conquer the Taiwanese Penghu and Taiping Islands. The Taiwanese air force retaliates with F-16 hit and runs on PLA ships. The defenses began to thin out however as Chinese bomber and missile strikes began to destroy key targets on the Penghu and Taiping Islands. China in order to gain more manpower annexes Hong Kong completely despite protests from it's population. Taiwanese rocket artillery and aircraft began to hit FOBs in the occupied Penghu and Taiping Islands with China drawing out drones to distract Taiwanese AA defenses while recon assets began to track Taiwanese battlegroup movements. During the amphibious landings conducted by PLA marines, China launched airborne landings onto southern Taiwan capturing ports and airports in southern Taiwan forcing Taiwanese forces defending the south fallback to the mountains into the interior of Taiwan. While dozens of ships were sunk, a majority of PLA landing forces managed to overrun the Taiwanese defenses. However, Taiwan begun large concentration of their forces on the PLA beached in the north and south while using artillery to shell strongpoints. China's advance was halted due to Taiwan's numerical superiority and the reorganization had caught China completely off-guard. Supplies from Japan and Philippines began to flood into Taiwan to continue halting China's advance. This led to China to impose a naval blockade on Taiwanese shores. The battle for the Spratly and Parcel Islands however remained inconclusive with the US, China and Russia losing ships and thousands of sailors and China had suffered casualties on its artificial islands in the South China Sea. In Korea, the US-led offensive had stalled as continuous numbers of Chinese and Russian soldiers kept being sent in. US and Japanese bases would still suffer continuous harassment, lack of Allied supplies and reinforcements until Australian and New Zealand soldiers arrived forcing the US-led forces to fallback from Kaesong to Hoeyang. Civilian casualties began to add up in the fighting that followed. Later on, Australian, New Zealand reinforcements began to pour into Korea while Chinese and Russian submarines began to actively sink Australian ships. Indonesia saw this as a threat to its security as one Chinese submarine sunk an Australian ship, one full of M1 Abram tanks was sank right off the Indonesian coast. Indonesia condemned China for the attack and had it's navy escort Australian and New Zealand ships heading for Korea. Reinforcements from Hawaii and Guam begin to arrive to Korea. Papua New Guinea was forced by Indonesia to join the Allies and send immediate reinforcements to Korea. Papua New Guinea obliges and sends a token force of 500 military personnel to Korea escorted by the Australian and New Zealand navy.

The Middle East: The Chaos ensues
With Europe and Asia engulfed in a full-on conflict, the hostilities in the Middle East had gone past boiling point and the conflict had already begun with the GCC, Egypt, Israel, United States and UK against Iran, Syria and Iraq. While Saudi Arabia had a trouble with their numerical advantage, called on the countries of Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Oman and United Arab Emirates to help with the manpower. The Arab coalition begun attacking Iraqi and Syrian territory and managed to gain a good foothold but were halted in a line stretching from Damascus to Fallujah and Basra. Israel joins the Arab coalition coordinating their attacks with Saudi Arabia and the UAE and began sending forces to Damascus. This would lead to brutal street fighting in urban territory by both sides with Iran, Iraq and Syria showing no regards for civilian casualties leading to condemnation from Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE, USA and GCC members. Iran in the meantime had begun sending their armored assets to Iraq along with anti-access/area denial attacks against the Arab coalition. With Iranian UAVs and civilian boats on recon missions, Iran began to track down and target NATO shipping and speedboats began to harass US ships in the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf. Iranian ASMs on Abu Musa, Lesser Tunb and Greater Tunb (which were islands originally owned by the UAE) begin harassing and overwhelming US' Aegis Naval combat systems while deploying mines and luring vessels to the water mines. These attacks supported by the ASM strikes from the islands were supported by ASCM launchers on Qeshm Island and with Klub-K ASMs launched from ships masquerading as civilian ships. Back on the ground, Iran launches a volley of ballistic missiles towards US airfields in Saudi Arabia and Camp de la Paix in the UAE, but the attacks on the UAE were mostly stopped due to US and Emirati THAADs shot down most of the mortars. Unsheltered aircraft and vehicles were hit by Iranian precision SRBMs. Iranian proxy forces would then launch hit-and-run attacks on the Arab coalition and began to assault US bases with mortar attacks supported by Iraqi aircraft. Coalition forces would respond by pushing further through Basra and their foothold on southern Iraq would strengthen. Israeli forces who had now received coordination from Egypt and Jordan and had now started with increased military aid, sent mechanized divisions, enters Lebanon and the Golan Heights despite meeting heavy resistance from Syrian forces and Hezbollah militias. PLO and Hezbollah militias begin increasing rocket attacks on Israel but most are intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome sight shooting down most of the rockets but some hit in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Nablus leaving a total of 1590 Israeli casualties. Israel while helping the Arab coalition and the US in coordinated attacks, began an agenda of it's own in the front with the goal to knock out targets tied to the Iranian Nuclear Plan, hence why Israeli jets had launched preemptive airstrikes destroying bunkers, railroads, powerplants and delivering a fatal blow against Iran's capabilities of obtaining a nuclear weapon. The nuclear fallout forced many Iranian civilians out of their rural areas outside of Tabriz and Tehran. The fallout would cause a humanitarian disaster with sandstorms sweeping the radiation to parts of Turkey, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Iraq and Pakistan. Iran in retaliation, after deploying scuds to Iraq, launched SRBM strikes at Saudi oilfields, ports and important bases throughout Saudi Arabia. Iran continued their retaliation act by completely blocking the Strait of Hormuz, causing an economic oil crisis as oil prices in several Allied countries began to increase. The US navy supported by the Saudi, Omani, British, French and Emirati navy begin to combat with the Iranian navy supported by Omani, Emirati, British, US and Saudi aircraft in an attempt to break the blockade. In order to sink more ships, Iran begins deploying more mines in droves. Iranian submarines had begun the operation laying mines while less-sophisticated mines were deployed to prevent US, British and French ships from passing through. Saudi and Emirati air forces assisted the US navy in damaging several Iranian vessels but had to be scaled back as Iranian AA batteries from Abu Musa and Greater Tunb began to heavily damage the aircraft. In the air, Russian, Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese and Syrian aircraft began to clash with their GCC, Israeli, British, US and French counterparts with the airpower evened out as both sides had a majority of aircraft to wield from their arsenal. Back on the ground, US, Arab, French, British and Israeli forces began to engage Iran and it's allies supported by Hezbollah and other radical Islamists groups conducting guerilla warfare and hit-and-run tactics on the Allied convoys slowing down the advance for Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad. Turkish forces who had agreed with the collaboration pact had begun a withdrawal from Kurdish territory in Syria and launched attacks on Assad's forces as PKK, YPG and Peshmerga forces launched offensives against Assad. Syria and Iraq would retaliate with offensives on Kurdish territory and airstrikes. Turkish border sights would accidentally be bombed by Syrian aircraft confusing it for another YPG stronghold provoking Turkish police and army units to justify their attacks on Syrian forces. The first reports of strikes on Kurdish civilians were already being suppressed by Iranian and Syrian media with support from Russia as Putin backed Iran's war effort in the Middle East. As Allied forces began to close in on the capital of Damascus, newly deployed Iranian and Russian ground forces along with Assad's forces resorted to the use of chemical weapons and DMWs and began digging in and fortifying the city, slowing down the allies even further. The Saudi-led coalition in Iraq would also see G4S PMCs in action with the Arab armies acting as fire-support teams.

The Allies Retreat: Fall of Helsinki, Kiev and Warsaw
With the Baltics fallen, Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan began a larger concentration on NATO stragglers in Ukraine and Poland taking the city of Lublin further west threatening Warsaw. The Polish army had begun to turtle up as CSTO forces began the encircling of Warsaw while putting up the resistance they could while Allied reinforcements continued to flood in. Fierce fighting began to emerge between NATO and CSTO forces with air power playing important roles. This would also see some of the biggest tank battles on a scale compared to Kursk and 73 Easting. The air superiority would land in NATO's favor forcing the Belarusian and Russian air forces to play defensive roles deploying some of their heavy AA to counter NATO's aircraft while supporting the armored offensives that followed. Russia would later launch blitz offensives sending the bulk of mechanized and armored divisions pushing further towards Warsaw forcing remaining NATO armies to resort to Stalingrad-like fighting.

The Royal Navy, German Navy, Danish, US and French Navy's attempts at breaking the Russian barrier in the Baltic Sea had failed mostly due to the Russian navy deploying mines in large portions of the Baltic Sea while remaining near the Gulf of Finland and the shores of the Baltic states and Kaliningrad. Reinforcements from the Netherlands, Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Britain, France, Spain and Portugal with fresh US and Canadian troops had finally reconsolidated with their Polish allies while US support had arrived in the ports of Germany. The US would later deploy B-52 bombers to remaining airports in Germany and Denmark with Britain deploying Avro bombers. The US and Britain would then begin a strategy where their bombing runs would decimate CSTO convoys with JSTARS aircraft guiding the B-52s and Avros. During this time, Russia and Kazakhstan demanded for Mongolian, Tajikistani and Turkmen conscripts be sent to Europe as Russian manpower had been caught up in the Middle East, Europe and Asia. Pulway and Radom fell into Russian hands as they had been harassing the NATO supply lines while casualties beginning to pile up with several heavy tanks and aircraft lost in the process. Realizing the trouble they were to encounter, NATO took the initiative and begun fortifying defenses around Warsaw and taking up positions in Mlawa and Siedlce while their air forces now were able to install certain levels of air superiority leading to the most of furious dogfights on a WW2 scale.

On the ground, the UK and France's military projection had been limited due to their deployments in Scandinavia, Middle East and Korea while Germany hadn't been prepared as when the Russians were attacking in Ukraine, Germany had already declared passive support but when the German battalion in the Baltics were attacked, Merkel had to do something about it and now with the CSTO on Poland, Angela realized that passive support wasn't enough and ordered all Bundeswehr units to Poland without proper mobilization. Germany's military capability was also limited as they had forces still fighting Al Qaeda in Mali as well as lacking a functional army due to mismanagement and underfunding. This along with several airfields being destroyed in Germany, Warsaw being surrounded and NATO's late reaction in the conflict lead to NATO forces being pushed towards Warsaw. While CSTO armies began to move towards Warsaw, they began to suffer aerial and artillery bombardment and with the counteroffensive underway, casualties on both sides began to pile up in a very short time which is similar to the opening of World War One. After NATO commenced for the evacuation of civilians from Warsaw on a Dunkirk-like scale, remaining NATO forces dug defenses hoping they could hold their ground until more consolidated forces could launch a counteroffensive against the CSTO.

In Scandinavia, NATO and Russia began using the lake networks in Finland as natural barriers to fortify their positions making the Finnish front to become part of the Scandinavian front that went into a stalemate after Kirkenes. Russian forces began launching armored offensives with support from the air attacks and missile strikes coming from St. Petersburg and Russian vessels in the Gulf of Finland, forced the Finnish government to flee to Oslo, Norway. Finland's geography having a vast amount of lake networks and large amounts of forests had thinned out the invading Russian armored down a lot and had helped the Finnish to hold onto Helsinki for a long time. Remaining Finnish forces managed to exploit the density of the Finnish forests by deploying portable Spike LR ATGMs but forced the Russians to conduct napalm strikes and artillery bombardments to flatten out as many forests as possible for it's armored units to move towards Helsinki as fast as possible and as safe as possible, causing massive casualties. With the continuous air raids and bombardments, this forced the Finnish population in Helsinki to retreat into underground bunkers, while on the surface, Russian forces began besieging Helsinki. In Ukraine, the situation became critical as forces suffered defeat after another defeat after weeks of brutal air bombardments and after weeks of trench warfare, NATO and Ukrainian forces retreated and Kiev fell into the hands of the Russians and the Donbass rebels. Luhansk and Donetsk rebels began to launch hit-and-runs on the war effort leading to civil war-like fighting in free parts of Ukraine. Ukrainian refugees begin to pour into Romania, Moldova, Hungary and Slovakia in hoping to find shelter. Remaining Ukrainian civilians would see total mobilization along with partisan resistance seeing that Ukrainian civilians had Black Market small arms following the outbreak of the war in 2014. During the first months, Kazakh, Belarusian and Russian forces targeted remaining strangleholds of Ukrainian army around the Chernobyl nuclear sight to take out the remaining presence of Ukrainian forces and to keep the positions secure as possible. However, during a skirmish between Belarusian and Ukrainian forces, artillery from the Belarusian forces accidentally hit the concrete sarcophagus of reactor 4, causing the sarcophagus to be heavily damaged, nuclear radiation was exposed to the natural wildlife and led to another nuclear disaster of Chernobyl. Romanian, Moldovan, Slovakian and Hungarian troops entered Ukraine as the first major NATO reinforcements of Ukraine while suffering missile attacks as the Russian navy now controlled the Black Sea after forcing the US and Turkish navy back, targeting NATO anti-missile shield sites. While most missiles were downed, a few managed to hit Bucharest and Istanbul. Swamplands were used by NATO forces as a natural barrier while digging in and strengthening their defenses. After months of non-stop combat and ugly numbers of civilian and military casualties, NATO forces evacuated and Warsaw fell into the hands of the CSTO forces. The NATO retreat from Warsaw would soon be brought to the Allies that the conflict may not stop soon hence why France, Poland, UK, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden had ordered the general mobilization of their population on a large scale since World War 2. But Germany, was originally more passive and reluctant to increase their manpower and strength due to the Bundeswehr having a lack of equipment and trained personnel including anti-war population, forcing Angela Merkel to conscript individuals unfit for Bundeswehr standards. While the Allies had prepared themselves for the offensive on Kaliningrad for the upcoming year. Russia and the CSTO would prepare for further offensives after deploying Mi-24 squadrons, T-90, T-80 and Armata tank fleets along with Russian Su-35s and Su-34s in Poland against NATO. On the home front, artists and bands met in person to perform the "Aid for Lives" event aimed for donations for refugees in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Red Crescent also jumped in on the action sending humanitarian aid to the refugees with songwriters and bands performing concerts simultaneously in Vienna, New York City, London, Paris, Washington D.C and Madrid making the most beneficial concert in human history and gained 100 million dollars for the humanitarian cause.

India joins the fight: Combat erupts in the Indian Subcontinent
With China and Pakistan siding against the US, India, the Asian powerhouse remained as the only SCO and BRICS member to remain neutral and was faced with increasing pressure to join the war. The Indian army was already on high alert conducting patrols along the Pakistani, Chinese and Nepalese border while having several standoffs against the Chinese and Pakistanis at Kashmir similar to the skirmish in 2019, India began mobilizing in the Himalaya Mountains against China. In retaliation, China masses more forces along the Sino-Indian border since the hostilities in East Asia increased, due to China's preparation for India's entry into the conflict. Similar to the 2020 Sino-Indian skirmish when Chinese and Indian forces clashed with each other in the remote areas of the mountain borders but the Chinese had lethal weapons which was a violation of the agreement when the previous skirmish happened in the Cold War while Indian and Pakistani forces clashed in Kashmir and that Chinese forces began to kill Indian soldiers along the Himalayas, India broke it's neutrality and declared war on Pakistan and China. Position of bases and troops had favored India in the Himalayas since China had missiles aimed eastward. But while Indian forces began to enter the Himalayas, it made it hard to bring it's tanks, IFVs, APCs, artillery and helicopters due to small fractions of road being available for heavy armored vehicles due to the topography and harsh winters despite a numerical advantage. China outwaited Indian forces in chokepoints in the Himalayas while launching guided missile attacks firing from the mountains with both sides have light infantry and small portions of rocket artillery and self-propelled-guns to fight the enemy. The missile strikes erupted a multitude avalanches in the Himalayas killing civilians and military personnel. China also managed to hit several Indian bases in Pradesh, Jammu, Kashmir, New Delhi and Himachal with a superiority in reconnaissance satellites. India began to conduct a series of aerial incursions on the front and mostly focused it on Kashmir. as China was only able to position a small fleet of aircraft on the inhospitable plateau of Tibet. China balanced the act by using several civilian airports in Tibet to station their jets as long as it took to redeploy reinforcements. Both sides tried to use long-range radar systems but due to the height of the Himalayas, signals are lost within 5 hours. This would lead to a majority of the fighting be done by infantry units. The offensive into Pakistani Kashmir, where both sides had around 750,000 soldiers stationed, lead to massive casualties by the next week. The mountainous geography of Kashmir had made it impossible for large formations to break defensive positions and made the Kashmir front very static. India and Pakistan would resort to neutralizing airfields with missile strikes but Pakistan's lack in missiles as well as the distance the weapons had to cross, favored India significantly. India's superiority in intelligence assets like UAVs allowed them to monitor Pakistani air and ground movement and managed to neutralize a huge amount of Pakistan's aircraft by the end of the month. Following the constant bombardment, India then began to use multi-role aircraft in ground-attacks while supporting their forces on the ground while preparing for an offensive into Pakistan. During India's concentration of forces for the offensive into Pakistan, said Revolutionist Powers member attempted to attack the Thar Desert. The harsh terrain however, had made it impossible for large formations to cross India, allowing for the Indian forces to bring Pakistan's offensive to a halt. Pakistani forces then decided to use the widespread desert to draw out Indian forces while inflicting a somewhat heavy casualty rate. In a first-wave attack, India launched the offensive into Pakistan's Punjab region leading to the Pakistani Al-Khalid, Al-Zarrar and T-80UDs combating the Indian Arjun, T-90 Bishma and Ajeya MK2. Since India only had a small fraction of roads available in this narrow area, they also began to prepare for an invasion of the Thar Desert despite the risks, while simultaneously launching an amphibious invasion of the Pakistani coastline. The Pakistani navy, while supported by the remnants of the Pakistani air force were forced to stay close to the costal areas as the Indian Navy had a numerical superiority but were kept at bay by the modern Pakistani ASMs. In order to keep up with Indian forces, Pakistan received demanded conscripts from Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. The 11th Motor Rifle Division "Sultan Sanjar" from Turkmenistan arrives as the first battlegroup in Pakistan.

Taipei falls: Taiwan surrenders
At the Asian theatre, both the US' allies and China's allies struggled to get the upper hand. On the Korean front, Chinese and Russian reinforcements managed to establish a numerical superiority of soldiers, artillery, armored transports, tanks and helicopters, leading to a Beijing Pact push into South Korea in the Second Battle for the DMZ allowing Russian, Chinese, Mongolian and North Korean forces to retake Dongducheon. Even though the Russian and Chinese submarines continued to harass the supply ships in the Pacific, US, South Korea, Japan, UK, France, Australia and New Zealand continued to get additional resources and manpower to hold their ground. Major General Karsten Stoye and Major General Metin Tokel would lead the American INDOPACOM in the meantime becoming the main Allied command in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean.

Allied forces had managed to make a parity with the Beijing Powers in the sky, since the Russian and Chinese air forces could only deploy a small fraction of their air power in North Korea while North Korea's air force consisted of mostly of outdated Soviet and Chinese equipment from the Cold War with the exception of the MiG-29 and Su-25 but lead to many Beijing Power aircraft being lost due to the Allies superiority in air defenses. The air advantage would then be used by the USAF to conduct bombing raids in North Korea, South China Sea, East China Sea and on occasion, Qingdao and Vladivostok, leading to severe logistical challenges for China as their ports would be damaged for 5 days at one point. China in retaliation then began to prepare to neutralize Allied island strongholds in the Pacific Ocean starting with the island of Guam. China then launched several supersonic DF-26 "Guam Killer" missiles hitting US naval basses and severely damaging the USS Mankin Island's stern, rendering it useless including civilian deaths among US Navy personnel and USAF personnel. China continued it's retaliation by launching DF-110 900 pound missiles against Taiwan and Japan and hitting targets in Kyushu, Senkaku and Tsushima Islands. With an ongoing naval blockade and continuous air strikes and missile strikes, most of Taiwan fell under Chinese control. Remaining Taiwanese forces retreated to Taipei intending to launch a guerilla warfare campaign and local counterattacks to hold at least a fraction of their remaining homeland until reinforcements arrived. Because Taiwan's population was also mobilized, the Chinese invaders were hit with pockets of resistance leading to the Keelung massacre and Genocide of Taichung. PLA forces swept through Taiwanese cities killing anyone who refused to abide the Chinese advance while the PLA Air Force supported by it's arsenal of recon satellites began to bomb civilian zones where parts of suspicion for resistance. Throughout the massacres and genocides, 11,000 would Taiwanese would die until the end of the conflict. After taking Taiwan and the Senkaku and Tsushima Islands, PLA forces landed in Okinawa, after months of missile strikes and bombing. Despite heavy US and Japanese resistance, China seized control over most of the islands in a few weeks and their submarines and air raids prevented Allied shipping from reaching Okinawa. With Taiwan, Hong Kong and Okinawa in Chinese hands, PLA General Li Zuocheng began to prepare the PLA for more land grabs starting at the Kyushu Islands and began to station A2/AD systems on the conquered territories establishing a new defense line against the Allies. Due to the Allies' superiority over the skies, US aircraft kept on interfering with the Chinese advance with B-52 carpet bombing runs destroying several supply convoys and makeshift bases in the Spratly and Parcel Islands while damaging Chinese naval vessels in the East China Sea and South China Sea. Back in Korea, North Korean, Chinese, Russian and Mongolian forces had managed to break through the DMZ and take Chuncheon, Uijeongbu and Gangneung and encircled Seoul leading to intense urban fighting. On northern Japan, Russian aircraft from Vladivostok launched several air raids on Hokkaido Island while the Pacific Fleet attacked JSDF naval vessels in the Sea of Japan. While inflicting considerable damage, the Russian Navy was pushed back and suffered severe casualties and were forced to take a defensive stance, while Delta III and Oscar II class submarines hunted Allied ships in the Sea of Japan and conducted strikes on Sapporo to prevent a complete build up of Japanese forces and launch an amphibious offensive on the Kuril Islands and Vladivostok. In the Himalayan Mountains, PLA and Indian forces were still in a deadlock since neither could bring their heavy equipment and reinforcements through and over the mountains. China then managed to increase the numbers of aircraft on reconverted civilian airfields and managed to inflict more damage on the Indian helicopters and aircraft. Because of China's buildup of forces in the west for 2 months, Beijing Power forces launched an offensive into Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir but resulted in heavy casualties in both sides due to mountain warfare. While both had been able to use their missile arsenal against each other while the missiles had been stationed in opposite directions, Chinese fighter jets and observation satellites along with a slight advantage with attack helicopters allowed for PLA forces to push further into Indian territory during the offensives in the said areas. However, the Indian part of the Western Front still remained in a static stalemate due to China's advance coming to a stand-still to India's numerical superiority. China in order to overcome the Himalaya barrier called on bordering countries of India to join the war with China and help with the PLA advance. Nepal reluctantly agreed while the mountains would guarantee as much protection as possible but some Nepalese officials weren't sure as they thought that allowing China into their homeland would be a covert occupation operation but nonetheless, Nepal sided with China and allowed PLA forces to cross through. Bhutan on the other hand denied the entry of Chinese forces and declared neutrality. Myanmar sided with China and the 2021 coup by the junta had forced Myanmar to become a complete Chinese ally and allowed Chinese forces to cross their territory and launch an encircling maneuver of India with Myanmar contributing a small junta force into India with Aung San Suu Kyi fleeing from Myanmar as Chinese forces had also set up FOBs and police forces to hunt down political rivals of the junta despite western nations condemning the coup and China's placement in Myanmar. In the Pacific, the Philippines declared war on China after the invasion of Taiwan and the island-grabbing-spree throughout the South China Sea. While Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte was more of a pro-Chinese person, the Philippines would still join the Allied Powers and contributed naval and air power against China in the South China Sea allowing for Allied forces to use the Philippines as a forward base in addition to Australia and Papua New Guinea. Indonesia would contribute a huge number of forces to Vietnam and Philippines while using its navy to grant safety with Allied shipping and had ensured for Papua New Guinea's safety with ships placed on the coast. China's aggressive stance however increased with an expansion operation towards Indonesian waters. Chinese warships had even begun to close in on Allied shipping in the vicinity of the Indonesian and Malaysian coast and fired on several supply ships and sank one full of NASAMS anti-air launchers. This lead to increased skirmishes between the PLA Navy and the US, Australian and Indonesian Navy and had the Malaysian Navy join the fight leading to new accusations of Chinese ships and helicopters violating Malaysian airspace and waters. The tensions escalated when Malaysian vessels were scrambled to attack several Chinese frigates and the Malaysian vessels near the frigates responded with warning shots claiming that the frigates were too close to the Malaya waters. The warning shots would later be seen as a provoking it as an offensive action leading to the Chinese frigates to fire on the Malaysian vessel damaging 1 and completely forced Malaysia into the conflict and followed by Singapore and Brunei, declared war against China. The PLA Navy attempted to cut off the supply chains to Korea in the seas around Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia and Australia while the Indonesian air force clashed with Chinese aircraft in the Riau Archipelago. Singapore threatened by the presence of the Chinese vessels scrambled available jets while coordinating their attacks with Australia who had a superior number in surveillance aircraft and radar systems conducted several air raids against the PLA ships and destroyed several vessels in potential zones that would've been disastrous if China managed to get a hold of if Singapore hadn't reacted. While the strikes had managed to inflict serious damage on the PLA vessels and while it had sent the task force running, PLA Navy ships from Hainan Island reinforced the task force falling back. PLA aircraft still managed to perform several incursions sinking Allied ships and damaging several vessels from the Indonesian and Malaysian Navy and attacking ASM sites in Brunei and Indonesia. While some of the strikes were successful, most of the aircraft were forced to abort as AA batteries had been placed on the ASM sites making it hard for PLA aircraft to even land 1 hit on. Meanwhile, Nepal's passage policy had made Chinese forces able to cross into India and in retaliation, India declared war on Nepal. Bhutan joined the Allies as PLA forces began entering their territory without permission. Myanmar would then declare war on India increasing the number of juntas helping PLA forces and sent forced conscripts that were unfit for PLA standards to the Indian front with the Burmese and Chinese government coming to an agreement on it. Bangladesh obliged to join the conflict with China as the Muslim country itself has had skirmishes with the said Asian powerhouse and also joined for economic benefits. Sri Lanka, which was tilting between both sides was forced to join China as a submarine base was hosted as part of the Belt Road Initiative, reluctantly declared war on India due to pressure from China.

Middle East: The fight gets ugly
In the Middle East, Allied forces were able to gain small successes compared to some of the other fronts, but the Strait of Hormuz remained in a deadlock. Armed Iranian gunboats and rapid-attack vessels performed several hit-and-run moves on US ships, while submarines began laying more precision mines, quiet submarine attacks and ground-based anti-ship missile attacks, lead to intense American and British casualties and turning the Strait of Hormuz into No-Man's-Land. To prevent these attacks from increasing, the US Navy under authorization from Vice Admiral Keith Blount dispatched Littoral combat ships which had highspeed attacking capabilities and could fight at close range on beach shores, while deploying attack helicopters and submarines. In Lebanon, Hezbollah fighters, backed by Quds Force fighters, lured IDF fighters into the steep valleys in Southern Lebanon, which made them vulnerable to guerilla attacks. Israel attempted to retaliate with artillery strikes on Hezbollah rocket sites but failed due to the Hezbollah fighters taking cover in their vast system of tunnels and bunkers that the militiamen had dug for years. The artillery strikes of Israel left many civilians killed or ending up in the hospital since Hezbollah's strongholds close to Lebanon's population and managed to blend among the civilians using them as a shield. IDF special forces supported by US Delta Force and Rangers took the cities of Tyros and Dibbine in a matter of days and the city of Sidon would also fall into Israeli hands and would allow the Allied Powers to threaten Beirut. Remnants of the Lebanese army, dominated by Hezbollah forces showed no resistance since they had a huge loss in morale and hoped that Hezbollah would surrender and be exterminated or at the very least, weakened to a point where their manpower was very limited throughout the conflict. Israel suffered numbers of rocket strikes from West Bank, Lebanon and Gaza Strip and despite the Iron Dome Site shooting down a majority of the rockets, Israel still had missiles hitting Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Be'er Sheva. Because the Allies had the air dominance, Beijing Powers struggled to gain any land even with artillery bombardments flattening huge portions of Allied held land with civilians getting caught in the bombardment zones.

Iranian bases along coastlines were hit by air-to-ground missile strikes by the superior Emirati, American and Saudi air forces, despite them not able to perform strikes deep into Iranian cities and territory. Iran and Russia attempted to counter this with Russia deploying S-400 and 9K37 Buk missile systems and Iran deploying the Raad and Sayyad-2. Iran continued retaliation with more ballistic missile attacks, but Saudi and US Patriot missile systems provided a form of protection against the missile salvos but Iran had managed to inflict damage on Saudi infrastructure on civilian areas. On the ground, the flat deserts in Iraq allowed for both sides to bring heavy armored divisions and large formations, but lead to the devastation of civilian areas, while Iran had no regards for civilian life. Despite the Allies having an advance in technology and with their equipment, Beijing Powers enjoyed numerical superiorities that made it hard for the Allies to advance. Nonetheless, combined troops from Israel, Egypt and Jordan, with the help of French, British and American special forces, they were able to break through Syrian defenses and encircle and threaten Damascus. In the meantime, Arab troops lead by Saudi Arabia pushed deep into the deserted areas of Iraq, allowing them to threaten Bagdad and moving closer to the Iranian border and the province of Khuzestan by taking Basra, forcing Iran to strengthen its defenses on its southwestern border.

During the Allied advance, both sides took parts in some of the worst war crimes of the 21st Century on a scale of the Holocaust, Nanjing Massacre and Armenian Genocide combined. Saudi forces along with remnants of Sunni militias swept through territory in Iraq and rounded up Shia militia men and boys in droves and massed executed them as Saudi Arabia claimed to "secure" as much territory as possible. Saudi Arabia justified their "secure" claim with religious reasons including it to be an "anti-terror move" claiming the Shia men who were killed acted as spies and key rebellion starters. While there were mass outcries from the Western Public and protests in cities like Toronto, London, Washington D.C, Madrid and Oslo, the governments of Allied nations remained quiet as losing Saudi Arabia as an ally would be disastrous. Sunni minorities in Iran began to protest against the Mullah Regime, and therefore declared those who demonstrated as enemies as well while Iranian forces began committing massacres against Sunni groups in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq and blamed the enemy for backing these unrests with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard firing on the protesters, arresting and deporting any survivors and constructing labor camps in the remote areas of Iran and Iraq where any remaining Sunnis would be incarnated and labeled as political rivals and POWs and forced them into labor including Iranian civilians suspected of supporting the opposition. Many Sunnis, but also western nationals and other minority members where executed and tortured in these camps, which was exploited for Allied propaganda. Iran who had also deployed a naval flotilla group to Venezuela, rounded up Western nationals and sent them to the prison camps labeled as high-potential threats.

Turkey, who had now been fully dragged into the conflict and collaborating with Saudi Arabia, Israel and the UAE (despite some distrust between the UAE and Turkey) followed through with offensives into Iraqi and Syrian territory on a strong condition that they wouldn't interfere with the YPG, Rojava, Iraqi Kurdistan and other Kurdish fighters. Erdogan felt pressure as any attack on Kurdish fighters that had aligned themselves with the Allies would mean the full expelling of Turkish forces from the Middle East and ordered Turkish forces to march against Syrian forces and bombarded fortified positions against Iraqi forces despite heavy resistance from both Syrian and Iraqi forces. Turkish aircraft were then ordered for airstrikes against Syrian and Iraqi strongholds along the Euphrates River. Kurdish YPG and SDF forces launched reorganized offensives with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and the United States launching airstrikes on Syrian forces while Iraqi Kurdistan with the Turkish forces continued with offensives against weakened Iraqi forces and occupying the north. Remnants of Shia insurgents supported by Iranian Quds Forces would launch preemptive counterattacks but to no avail, while remnants of ISIS insurgents tried to regroup and launch any remaining offensive moves they could muster but Iranian forces had forced them to be part of Iranian forces. Remaining ISIS forces that had fled from Iranian forces would only be able to perform small attacks on both Allied and Beijing Power Forces and would finally side with the Beijing Powers and with their remaining manpower and improvised trucks, they would perform hit-and-run moves with Shia militias rather reluctantly as these ISIS fighters were Sunni and lead to mistrust among the ISIS fighters and Shia militias. Syrian forces committed horrendous war crimes led by several policemen against Kurdish fighters and civilians. Kurdish men and boys were forced to dig holes where their own bodies would be disposed of, while women and girls were abducted for weeks and were gang raped, before most of them would be left for dead. Houses would be burned and looted while dead bodies would be burned and rolled over by tanks. When news of this came to Assad, he denied any allegations of the massacres and called it "Anti-Syrian" propaganda and claimed that the territories that were taken from the Kurds were just against "insurgents." Later on, reports would later be brought up of Iranian strikes on Turkish forces in Iraq. The US would deploy the USS Philippine Sea in the Mediterranean along with the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and several Littoral Combat Ships for protection of the Mediterranean Sea. US aircraft would then perform increased strikes in Syria while helicopters would be deployed to Israel to assist in ground fighting in Syria while the Littoral Combat Ships would protect the fleet and would be soon accompanied by the Turkish Navy and several more US destroyers.

Caucus Slaughter
While both Europe and Asia continued to plunge deeper into chaos and destruction, the Caucasus conflict was starting to light up and also saw increased actions of war. While Georgia engaged in combat against Russian backed forces in the self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Azerbaijan was engaged with Armenia once again but on a higher scale. Tensions scaled even higher between the 2 countries since the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict and afterwards. It left several disputed territory under Azerbaijan's control. Despite having a superiority over Armenia in terms of numerical superiority, positions at the start of the conflict did not completely favor Azerbaijani forces. The territories of Nakhchivan was surrounded by Armenian forces despite Azerbaijani forces advancing during the 2020 conflict and the implementation of a corridor between Nakhchivan and Azerbaijan, while the mountainous terrain of both nations only allowed their armored formations to act as direct infantry support while heavy formations had to be thinned into regiments and air power was severely limited due to bad weather and heavy fog. The autonomous and disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh had an army of its own, which was build up and supported by Armenia and Russia, allowing Armenian troops to enter Nagorno-Karabakh in order to attempt pushing into Azerbaijan, while Armenian troops attacked Nakhchivan, using Bm-21 Grad, AR-1A, BM-27 Uragans, Giatstint-Bs and 2S1 Gzvodika systems to shell this relatively isolated part of Azerbaijan. Reports came in that Armenia had also begun using Scud and Iskander ballistic missile equipment to attack Azeri positions throughout Shahbuz and Adgam. Through this intensive bombardment, Armenia managed to take Dyudengya and Shahbuz, while further north pushing towards Tovuz. The Armenian offensive through Nagorno-Karabakh also saw some success due to Armenian troops entering Martakert and Agdam city, threatening Ganja. Militias from the autonomous region of Artsakh, supported by Armenian forces launched several incursions along the Azeri border diverting Azerbaijani forces. Armenia's air force had a disadvantage against Azerbaijan's air force and used Israeli planes and Turkish drones for reconnaissance, attack and supporting Azerbaijani ground operations. Azerbaijan also began use of their LORA ballistic missiles and began retaliation of their own with artillery to halt the Armenian offensive but it was rendered futile as Azeri commander Ramiz Tahirov relied on infantry divisions stationed in the hills and mountains. Armenia's air defense inventory had increased the number of Azerbaijani casualties, despite the Azeri aircraft managing to hit several of these AA batteries and used Turkish standoff missiles against artillery positions and infantry entrenched in the hills and allowed Azeri pressure to mount against Armenians all over the Nagorno-Karabakh front. Not to forget, Azerbaijan was able to add a large portion of its reservist pool into the army, which enabled it to retake the occupied territory, while also pushing into the Armenian side of Nagorno-Karabakh, taking Stepanakert. Attack helicopters were used by both sides to maneuver smaller concentrations of troops over the hills, while Armenia pushed further into Nakhchivan. Russia would then start sending full air-support for the Armenian forces and Artsakh rebels against Azerbaijani forces in bombardment and reconnaissance. Iran supported Armenia by conducting some smaller airstrikes and artillery bombardments against Azeri targets close to its border. Turkey on the other hand used the aggression against Nakhchivan to justify a declaration of war against Armenia. Turkish troops stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh after the war of 2020 joined in on the Azeri offensives and provided additional man and firepower. While Turkey launched a full scale invasion and bombing campaign against Armenia, Turkish proxy forces, which were comprised mostly of jihadist mercenaries from war-torn Syria and Libya, also joined the fighting against the Armenians, leading to the first reports of war crimes being committed against ethnic Armenian civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia proper. The Syrian mercenaries would be concentrated with militia-like fighting against Artsakh rebels while Libyan mercenaries would be tasked with assisting remaining Azeri forces holding onto pieces of territory about to fall into Armenian hands. The approximately 5000 Russian soldiers in the Armenian capital of Yerevan where concentrated in the North of Armenia, to open another front against Georgia, while also avoiding confrontation with Turkey over Armenia. The Russian peacekeeping forces stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh after the war of 2020 were used in assisting the Armenian forces and opening up other fronts in Georgia and Azerbaijan. In Georgia, separatists from the rogue regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia continued to attack Georgian forces gathered around the disputed borders, supported by more than 3000 Russian soldiers and Russian medium-range aircraft and artillery. Georgian forces were forced into a retreat as Turkish forces had declared war and began sending reinforcements to Tbilisi. While the Georgian army had made some victories by breaking barricades in Ghogethi, and the Tsitelubani and Orchosani region, which were used over the years to take additional Georgian territory through creeping annexation. Remaining Georgian forces established barriers in Akhalgori and shelled Tskhinvali, the push into Abkhazia was halted by incoming Russian soldiers supported by T-72BU and T-14 tanks. Russia launched Scud attacks all over Georgia, while the Black Sea fleet shelled positions around Tbilisi and Abkhazia. The Russian forces at Georgia's southern border were able to either take or destroy important infrastructure around Amamlo and Naghvarevi, relieving the pressure on South Ossetia. Turkish forces continued to arrive in Georgia as they had now been pressured on all fronts and Turkish aircraft even began launching incursions against the Armenian forces and Russian onslaught in Georgia.

Europe: Kaliningrad Offensive and the battle overseas
The fresh Romanian, Hungarian, Moldovan and Slovakian reinforcements had done little to prevent the Russian and CSTO forces from advancing as the NATO forces had been scattered and disorganized after the fall of Kiev, but were able to prevent deeper incursions from happening in the north of Lutsk with the Black Sea Fleet supporting the CSTO forces, Odessa fell and Russian and Kazakh forces closed on the Ukrainian-Moldova/Transnistria border. Protests erupted in Sevastopol by Muslim Crimean Tartars against the continuous influx of Russian forces into the Peninsula, which were seen as an oppressing force by many Tartars, where brought to an violent end by the occupying troops in the city. Russia, backed by the CSTO accused NATO and the United States for backing the protests and acts of sabotage against the Russian military. As a result, Russian military police were deployed into Crimea and began to use military force against the protesters, leading to days of civil unrest which culminated in a hundred Tartars being massacred by the Russians and would eat up time and resources for greater offensives in Europe. Russian troops stationed in the Moldovan breakaway region of Transnistria were already mobilized and ready to engage in combat with rebel forces from Transnistria already engaging Moldovan security forces. When their counterparts in Ukraine reached the outline of the border. In the same time in Poland, revisionist troops where able to take Thorn and Bromberg, while fresh recruits from all over Europe arrived on a daily basis in Poland. While Europe prepared more and more fresh recruits as a result of mass mobilization for the battle against Russia, the war on the European seas was heating up. In the Baltic Sea, Russian vessels continuously laid out sea mines to deny access to the Polish and Baltic coast for allied ships, while using their Kalibr missiles to disrupt allied supply lines from the sea. The navies of Finland, Sweden, Poland, Denmark and Germany including the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian navies that had fled tried to break through Russian naval defenses, but due to continuous submarine attacks, air raids from the occupied Baltic coastline and anti-ship missile attacks, said navies suffered heavy losses, without reaching the Polish coast. The Danish navy then begun to patrol the entrance of the Baltic Sea, and its own shores, while remaining far enough from the open sea to avoid direct clashes with Russia's fleet. Since the NATO fleets dwarfed Russia's Baltic Fleet. Russian vessels stayed close to the coastline and the Baltic Sea entrance close to the Danish defense lines to play a more defensive move, supporting the Russian air force by sea. Russian Tu-95, MiG-29, Su-35 and Tu-160 bombers in the northern Atlantic were able to perform several incursions into the north sea, using long distance stand off missiles to hit allied ships that tried to sail further north. A few American surface vessels and submarines were also sent into the Baltic Sea, in order to give additional support to Allied forces in the air, sea and on land. The US navy also conducted several missile strikes against Russian positions around Kaliningrad and the Polish-Baltic coastline, while using its submarines alongside Polish naval aircraft to destroy the Nord Stream II pipeline under the Baltic Sea. The Biden and the Duda administrations claimed that this was targeted against Russia, the financial losses and resulting shortages of natural gas mostly affected Germany, leading to speculation that this was the actual intention of the operation. The Russian Navy, without any carriers in Europe can only rely on forward air bases and helicopters for air attacks as the Kuznetsov was still supplying Assad's forces against the Allied advance in the Middle East. NATO vessels then began to patrol the UK-Iceland-Greenland gap to prevent Russian vessels and submarines from slipping into the Atlantic while the navies of the US, Norway, France, Belgium and Netherlands secured the said gap and when the US threatened the Russian naval bases in Murmansk, Severomosk and Polyarny and drawing up targets along the Russian Kola Peninsula, the Battle of the Barents Sea became one of the largest naval battles of the entire conflict. The Russian Northern Fleet was pressured as they now had to play a defensive strategy in order to protect the Russian coast while attempting to inflict as much damage on the Allied fleets through the means of submarine attacks and air raids on aircraft carriers, amphibious assault ships and destroyers. Allied ships also came under attack by Russian aircraft and anti-ship missiles from the direction of Murmansk, and even though the allied navy slightly outnumbered the Russian fleet, the Allies suffered heavy casualties. After losing many ships and aircraft against the Russians due to submarine, air, and missile strikes, the Allied attack was called off and the ships were pulled back, but Admiral Vladimir Korolyv was still weary about large-scale operations in the gap and only resorted with submarine attacks on stragglers of Allied ships still in the gap. Russian VDV regiments captured the Swedish island of Gotland turning it into a forward ground and air base and threatened the Allies as they had been struggling in the Baltic Sea and with aircraft in Gotland, they would be vulnerable to more air attacks. The Aland Islands also fell with Russian marines and VDV forces taking what remained of Finnish forces before they fled for Sweden and used the Aland Islands as another forward operating base and continued to threaten the Allied forces as the Russians began to deploy Iskander systems on Gotland Island and with reported attacks from the Iskanders and additional Tockha systems. In Poland, Allied forces that had regrouped with reinforcements from Germany, Denmark, France, United Kingdom, United States and Dutch forces desperately attempted to slow down the CSTO advance in order to fully consolidate it's fully mobilized forces and heavy equipment. US B-52 bombers and UK Vulcan bombers and other Allied aircraft established some form of air superiority and managed to hit several supply convoys within conquered territory and US ships performed Tomahawk strikes on the convoys too. Further strikes into occupied territory would fail as Russia using the S-300 and S-400 and the newly built S-500 and the wide range of AA vehicles and newly deployed Su-34s, Su-35s and upgraded MiG-29s, which were able to hit the enemy from within Russia's borders. After Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, Kiev, Helsinki and Warsaw fell, CSTO forces dug into the cities using them as fortresses and key supply chains against Allied counterattacks. while Belarusian, Kazakh and Russian troops pushed towards Bromberg and Danzig. Polish troops on the Hel peninsula tried to slow down the Russian approach from Kaliningrad by using artillery and guided anti-tank missiles, but they became trapped by Russian naval strikes from the sea and air and missile attacks from the Kaliningrad exclave, leading them to be almost completely cut off from the mainland and were forced to evacuate to prevent being captured completely. The United States in the meantime kept flowing in more reinforcements and with an approximate 70,000 soldiers deployed to Europe despite some submarine strikes sinking several ships. The US EUCOM took the role as the Allied command even with submarine attacks while NATO's LANDCOM, AIRCOM and MARCOM became the command for air and sea operations overall. The Russian submarine attacks proved to be ineffective due to the Allies having naval superiority and too many vessels to sink, while Allied ships kept patrolling the UK-Greenland-Iceland gap to prevent more vessels from attacking the Atlantic and prevented a Russian breakthrough. Among some of the weapons being brought to Europe by the US were HIMARS rocket launchers aimed at destroying Russian S-500, S-400 and S-300 and other targets for long-range artillery bombardment. Patriot and THAAD batteries would also be deployed to Europe for long-range AA operations against Russian aircraft. Meanwhile, the Allies managed to consolidate and gather humongous reinforcements for Poland, Ukraine and Norway. Along the entirety of the European front: French, US, Belgian, Canadian, British, Dutch, Luxembourgish and German forces took position with the retreating Polish and Baltic armies while Romanian, Greek, Turkish, Hungarian, Slovakian, Moldovan and Italian reinforcements took positions in free parts of Ukraine. Czechia, which feared that if Poland and Ukraine fell, it's bordering countries and itself would be put in the path of the CSTO onslaught deployed several forces to the Polish border not far from Katowice. However, the Allied convoys to Ukraine would be disrupted as rebels in Transnistria began launching guerilla attacks on convoys and had forced a few regiments of infantry to deal with this matter. But by that point, Kazakh, Kyrgyzstani, Russian and Belarusian forces launched blitz attacks on Moldova and with Transnistrian rebels, overran combined forces and within a week, Moldova capitulated and the Allied armies in Ukraine evacuated to Romania and the Odessa Oblast fell into CSTO hands and effectively knocked Ukraine and Moldova out of the war. While the front in Norway and Finland went static, and the CSTO successfully taking Warsaw, Vilnius, Tallinn, Riga, Odessa, Kiev, Helsinki and Chisinau, the Allies became desperate to stop the Russian-led advance in Poland. More recruits from both sides continued to flood in, while anti-air and aircraft defenses were able to further install supremacy in the sky and hinder any large air offensive conducted by the Russians or Belarusians despite the constant harassment of airfields all over Europe. After the last of Polish stragglers and civilians evacuated from the Hel Peninsula, General Jens Stoltenberg along with Macron, Duda and General Tim Radford had ordered NATO forces to launch a counteroffensive aimed at Kaliningrad where they intended to destroy Iskander missile sites, airfields for MiG-25s, Su-25s, Su-34s, Mi-24s, T-90s, T-80s, T-14s, Sovremeney class destroyers, Delta III submarines, Bm-30 Smerch systems and cripple the airfield and roads to slow the supply of ammo, reinforcements and more missile attacks devastating NATO forces. While the CSTO had shifted their weight at building up their offensives and fortifying captured cities, NATO hoped to immobilize the exclave of Russia and it's allies in order to stop the advance. Allied recon and surveillance aircraft helped them in their build up of local forces, while smaller attacks in Poland would be launched as a diversion. Remnants of the Lithuanian army, reinforced by German, British, French and American forces started the Kaliningrad counteroffensive with air and artillery strikes against the exclave while several US ships that arrived at the entry of the Baltic Sea launched Tomahawk missiles against several Iskander launching positions and with other ships attacking Russian Navy ships in the vicinity of Kaliningrad and the Baltic Sea. It was the first time in the entire war that official Russian territory became the target of actions of war, leading to a fierce counter attack from Russian and Belarusian forces. Due to the numerical advance of allied troops, the European offensive did managed to push into the territory of Kaliningrad, while Allied air losses mounted rapidly because of Russian S-300, S-400 and S-500 systems stationed in the exclave. Russian forces reinforced Kaliningrad with its airborne brigades, including air droppable armored vehicles. Russia's Baltic fleet then launched several Kalibr strikes against Allied targets on the ground of Kaliningrad, with no regard for their own soldiers there. It became a deathtrap on both Allied and Russian soldiers in the vicinity of Kalibr strikes. The Allies also managed to perform a series of airborne assaults due to still obtaining air superiority. Russia would retaliate to use its Iskander inventory with the shortest range possible, creating hundreds of casualties in both Allied and Russian forces stationed. Later on, the counteroffensive began to slow down and Russian and Belarusian forces on the flanks realized about the diversions and quickly took towards the NATO supply convoys heading for Kaliningrad and increased bombing campaigns against the front lines and that recruits form the Allies were inexperienced. The Germans suffered the most of casualties of recruits as they had conscripted unfitted recruits with militia-like training. The Russian Spetsnaz VMF and GRU units were deployed and began to disrupt communications with systems like the Krasukha-4 jamming systems and acts of sabotage against convoys by destroying bridges, crippling roads and surprise attacks on convoys too. In order to stop the ongoing attacks against Kaliningrad, Russia retaliated with the use of rather inhumane conventional weapons. Russia decided to deploy it's TOS-1 Buratino systems which fired fuel-air explosives with napalm and chemical warheads against NATO forces en masse. The warheads spread a chemical cloud in the air, that seeped into buildings and every open space, before being ignited by a secondary explosive. The heat of the explosions caused lethal burns, the overpressure created lead to the creation of a partial vacuum due to the sudden combustion of air, killing hundreds to thousands of soldiers in grotesque ways. The explosions and resulting fires caused the victims to suffer bone fractures, internal hemorrhaging and suffocation, due to the air that was being sucked out of their lungs and replaced wit harmful gasses that would be carried by the blood to vital organs around the body effectively, killing the soldier from the insides. Russia also deployed the Bm-27 Uragan and Bm-30 Smerch systems and with a new piece of MLRS technology, the Tornado-G was also deployed and the systems were also used incendiary warheads too. To neutralize the continuing threat, Stoltenberg and Radford had ordered NATO to deploy several long-range LRA-B Bombers at the Western Front. They jammed the radars even at low frequency. Germany then deployed a huge number of Leopard 2A7 tanks, France deploying their Leclercs and Polish forces sending the PT-91 Twardy and these would see major success while supported by NATO aircraft. This went south for the Bundeswehr as they only used tungsten ammunition, they were unable to penetrate the armor of Russian T-80s, T-90s and T-14 Armatas. The Allied attacks were also supported with helicopters with US Apaches, British AgustaWestland Apache and French Eurocopter Tigre Helicopters armed with HOT 3 ATGMS, PARS 3 ATGMS, AGM-144 Hellfires and Spike Missiles. The Israeli made 31 pound Spike ATGMs were able to hit targets from a distance of 800m-8 km, piercing through tank armors after the detonation of the tanks own reactive armor, leading to heavy losses on the Revisionist side. The Allies realized that even with the offensive into Kaliningrad and with the consolidation and counterattacks happening, they would be able to prevent the CSTO from completely overrunning Poland and changed their strategy completely. NATO began to dig fortifications that were a network of bunkers, trenches, land mines, dragon teeth, barbwire and a line of these repeated defenses from the Baltic Sea to occupied Moldova and Ukraine. This was possible due to Allied air supremacy and technological advantage, while Russia also fortified multiple of the conquered cities in Poland. The area between the lines became the battlefield of tank, infantry and artillery attacks, leading it to be nicknamed the "New No-Mans Land." and the establishment of the new Fulda Line.

Eastern Front: The Dragon's slaughter continues
After Taiwan fell, China fully occupied the country and the Senkaku and Tsushima Islands and Taiwanese Islands in the South China Sea. With a new year meant more Chinese offensives against the Allied Islands and with missile strikes targeting the Japanese bases in Kyushu and allowing China to immobilize a huge fraction of Japan's anti-submarine planes. China then dispatched several submarines to the South China Sea and East China Sea and a majority of Japanese submarines were sunk in the following battles that occurred. While Chinese ships joined the submarines and began using anti-air missiles and naval missiles to put the pressure on the Japanese around Kyushu, Chinese troops in the South managed to use the conquered Senkaku and Sakishima Islands as staging grounds for amphibious and airborne assaults against Okinawa. Japanese forces around Okinawa would later be put under greater pressure as several scout helicopters and scout corvettes spotted Chinese landing ships full of HQ-7 AA systems, PGZ-95s, WZ-551 transports, ZTZ-99A tanks, ZBD-05 amphibious transports and Type 86A transports including landing craft full of infantry. After the months of continuous missile strikes and the harassment of Allied reinforcement routes allowed Chinese marines landed on Okinawa and overwhelm Japanese and stationed US forces. Despite US air support, the Chinese forces managed to push back the joint Japanese and US forces and take a majority of the islands. Due to the supply lines from Australia to Korea were disrupted by PLA Navy strikes near Indonesia and Malaysia and reinforcements from the Japanese mainland are hindered by Chinese vessels in the East China Sea, China was able to use more of the taken territory to perform island hopping. As soon as Chinese forces kept closing in on Japanese mainland, the Islands taken from Japan were not able to sustain enough forces to realistically threaten Kyushu and the mainland. American and Filipino forces managed to slow down the Chinese advance by inflicting heavy casualties on the invading forces from a distance while the US also deployed F-35s to Manila and began launching Tomahawk strikes on Chinese ships and F-35s for hit-and-run attacks on the landing ships. While Beijing Power forces kept Seoul encircled despite the joint Chinese, Russian, North Korean, and Mongolian forces making progress after the DMZ line broke and the line almost shattered. Their advance was stalled by the combined effort of American, British, Australian, New Zealand, Japanese and South Korean forces. Seoul remained encircled and under siege as one of the last allied bastions in the north of South Korea. American bomber raids against Chinese coastal targets came to an almost stand-still, since the continuous attacks on allied bases in the Pacific and the newly deployed Chinese anti-access defense systems on conquered islands heavily disrupted the US-led approaches. Seeking a different strategy against China, the Allies attempted to increase their effort to strangle China economically by creating multiple naval blockades, since China was very reliant on marine trafficking. The Indian navy, despite being in preparation of an amphibious invasion of Pakistan and probably also Sri Lanka, supported the allied blockades by sailing into the Malaysian strait of the South China Sea. Because the Indian Navy had to cross larger distances, they had trouble moving through as several PLA ships would always seem to ambush Indian ships and launch air raids on several of the ships and several heavily damaged. The ongoing fights disrupted maritime trading and disrupted the economy and increased the tensions between several Asian countries. Near Oceania, Fiji, Vanuatu, Narau and several Pacific island countries joined the war against China while other countries remained neutral as claiming they don't have a desire to get involved. In the Chinese province of Xinjiang, various uprisings were sparked by the Uyghur Muslims backed by the GCC and NATO and erupted around the day of the Tiananmen Square Massacre causing civil unrest and brutal retaliation and countermeasures from China for the sake of "protection of the homeland". Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Imran Khan accused the West of constructing, orchestrating and supplying the riots to launch a destabilization act against China. Hundreds of Uyghurs were killed or arrested and many other Uyghurs and regime-critics as they were transported to "re-education" camps where they were tortured and forced into labor, while also many of them were executed right away. As an last attempt of diplomatic approach, the UN, which condemned the war since the beginning and deployed blue-helmets along all frontlines called for a meeting to seek a dialogue between the Allies and the Revolutionist Powers. While leaders of Allied countries gathered in New York to attend the meeting, the Revolutionist Powers, like China, Russia and Iran only sent a small entourage of diplomats, who arrived in New York under extremely high security measures, in order to avoid unnecessary escalation. While enormous protests of pro-Allied and Revolutionist crowds emerged outside the UN building, inside the representatives of both sides used this opportunity to demonstrate their view of the war, blaming the other side, while claiming to act on a legitimate basis. Multiple politicians from non-state combatants were invited as well, in order to show the suffering the war has caused. Soldiers who fought at the Battle of Kaliningrad, Seoul and Iraq delivered speeches that showed the perspective of the fighting troops of the conflict, while civilians from South Korea and refugees from Taiwan reported about the horrors the civilians had to endure. Overall, the conference remained inconclusive even when both sides claimed they would want to try to peruse a peaceful solution to the fronts. The UN would regather again for the remainder of the war, while waring nations like the US, China and Russia even left the organization, causing the UN to fall apart and soon, dissolve throughout the entire conflict. An emergency meeting was held in Singapore to discuss the continuing threat of China and Russia and were considering bombing campaigns on Chinese strongholds on Hainan Island and to reinforce vulnerable nations such as Brunei, Laos and Vietnam. Undenounced to them, diplomats from both Laos and Cambodia began planning with Xi Jinping and the generals of the PLA for an entry into the war and with Burmese forces, attack Thailand and Vietnam in simultaneous attacks while naval ships would block any access of Allied shipping and PLA marines would attack Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. Chinese armored and mechanized divisions moved into Laos and Cambodia under their protection and had begun militarization for their entry into the war prior to the outbreak. Out east, Russian Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers from Vladivostok enacted a bombing campaign on the Aleutian Islands, Japan, South Korea and Philippines. While these attack were successful in damaging Allied factories, bases, airfields, ports and key infrastructures, they were countered with significant losses and many bombers being damaged despite them under heavy escort by Su-35s, MiG-25s, MiG-29s and Su-27s. The buildup of armed forces on both sides would lead to a new meaning of "Scorched Earth".

Middle East: Palestine declares war
At the Middle Eastern Front in 2024, while Saudi Arabia and its GCC allies enjoyed some victories in their fights against Iran and the Allies enjoyed proxies, Clandestine special operation forces of the US inside Iran managed to destroy and sabotage key assets of the enemy, while also escorting Allied insiders into safety outside of the Islamist republic under the cover of night. Iran itself then began to suffer a shortage in ammunition stockpiles even when Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan tried to hold up the ammunition stocks for it's ally in the Middle East. The Allies in the meantime used their advantage in the Eastern Mediterranean to bring more supplies to deal with the bulk of Iranian, Syrian, Russian, Iraqi and Hezbollah forces, while supporting Israel's effort against the Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestine, but was more reluctant for the Arab countries as some like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman had condemned previous Israeli attacks in Lebanon and rifts began to form in the Israeli-GCC alliance. The US then kept shipping in HIMARS and Patriot systems and Apache attack helicopters like those from the European front. Iranian proxy forces and Quds Force troops in Syria and Iraq retaliated in the use of anti-IED assets to penetrate and heavily damage American assets on the battlefield. Despite these assets damaging US equipment, it wasn't enough to prevent Green Beret and Delta Force soldiers from targeting the bases and neutralizing bunkers where the weapons were received. US B-52 bombers stationed in Diego Garcia and Doha were deployed to circumvent the Iranian air defenses. Among some of the air defenses were Russian S-500 and S-400 systems which saw major success on the European front and Iranian Bavar-373 SAMs. In order to cope with these systems, the Allies massively increased their sortie raids, leading to more than 1,500 strikes to be performed per day at the Middle Eastern Front. From Al Minhad and Al Dhafra Air Base, aircraft from France, United States, United Kingdom, Australia and United Arab Emirates and from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, strikes would be carried out against strongholds in Iraq to cut down the amount of forces flowing in. In the Arabian Gulf, the US used airborne intelligence assets to detect any threats in the Strait of Hormuz using the 380th Expeditionary Wing's Boeing E-3B/ C Sentry aircraft since the Strait of Hormuz gave the Allied Fleets only a small time to react to attacks from Iranian assets like Ghadir-class mini-subs. In order to circumvent with the Iranian anti-ship warfare in the Gulf, the US also brought in Rolling Airframe missiles, Evolved Sea-Sparrow missiles and standard missiles, that kept decimating Iran's own cruise missile inventory. America deployed up to three carrier groups in the Region, although the continuous battle in the Persian Gulf forced the majority of the fleet to operate from the Arabian Sea targeting the southern Iranian coast including Qeshm Island and the coast off shore of Oman. Despite many Iranian anti-ship batteries along the southern coast being destroyed, the US still lost one carrier in the process, rendering the Beijing Powers in the Middle East a somewhat a success at seas. Further to the West, the Palestinian territories kept being entangled in the war. After the radical Islamist Hamas pledged its alliance to Iran as early as 2022, both Israel and Hamas kept exchanging hostilities, causing the latter to proclaim that it would not stop attacking Israel until it drops out of the war in favor of Iran, hoping that this could help Hamas to increase its pressure on Israel to push their own agenda and to force Israel to withdraw from Lebanon and Syria. After hundreds of Iranian made missiles hit targets all over western Israel, like Tel Aviv, dozens of Israelis were killed since Israel's Iron-Dome air-defenses were worn out and depleted after almost 2 years of fighting. After several radical Palestinian suicide attacks in Jerusalem that killed a total 100 Israeli civilians, Israel had enough and declared war on Palestine and with the remaining IDF forces, they launched an offensive to invade the Gaza Strip to wipe out Hamas. This caused massive outrage and opposition reaction from the Palestinian population and lead to thousands of protests against the IDF forces. Many Palestinians gathered at the border of Israel to fight against the invaders. Civilians threw rocks, used slingshots against armored vehicles and some used Molotov cocktails against the more heavily armored Israeli vehicles. while Hamas members used the crowds as human shields and covers to fire at the Israeli troops. This caused the Israelis to take countermeasures, leading to exchanges of fire between the Hamas and the Israeli forces between the protesters, which lead to the death of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, exploited by Hamas and Iranian propaganda. Israel responded to the Hamas attacks use of phosphorus rounds on Hamas strongholds. In retaliation, other Islamic Jihadists began more suicide attacks in Israel through the means of strapping explosives in their cars and ramming them into civilian infrastructure. Israel demanded the US to send more Patriot systems as their Iron-Dome systems were beginning to run dry after deflecting attacks from both Iranian and Palestinian attacks since the start of the conflict.

Continental News: Africa declares war
The escalation in Asia and the South China Sea increased the economic pressure on both the Allies and the Beijing Powers with both sides imposing blockades against each other. Because of the blockades and most maritime routes disrupted because of the conflict, the belligerents were eager to find ways to replace any resources missing, or other ways to relieve the pressure on them. The Beijing Powers under China and Russia therefore encouraged their regional partners in Africa like Algeria and Angola to take action against Allied forces stationed on the continent and their resources. At the same time, Allied troops were making plans to secure the oilfields of North Africa, since the flow of Middle Eastern oil has been heavily disrupted by the war. Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Egypt therefore encouraged General Khalifa Haftar and his forces in Libya to start new offensives against the opposing Libyan GNA government in the West, in order to further cutting it off from the oilfields in the North of the country. Since Egypt was heavily reliant on subsidized oil from Libya after the First Gulf War, Egyptian troops of el-Sisi joined Haftar's attack and carried out airstrikes on Libyan targets with F-16s, Alpha Jets and Mirage 2000s, while Haftar's forces started to shell Tripoli once again like they did in 2019. Egypt justified this actions officially by using terrorist movements through its shared border with Libya as an excuse. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates sent financial aid and weapons for Haftar, while the general also encouraged militias to participate in the conflict from the South. The GNA government condemned these acts of aggression and declared war on Haftar's supporters, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The US, while was more reluctant, supported Haftar in diplomatic cover after Saudi Arabia, Chad, UAE and Egypt lobbied over the years in his favor. Despite Haftar enjoying support from the Russian PMC Wagner Group, they would ultimately turn their back on Haftar as Putin threatened to withdraw them from service in Africa. The Wagner Group would realign itself with the GNA and would conduct new offensives against Haftar's forces. Despite Turkey and Qatar pleading their full allegiance to the Allies, they still supported anti-Haftar factions fighting in Libya and soon, small rifts were beginning to form in between the Allies. This didn't help since the UAE wasn't on good terms with Turkey. The United States began to fear that the alliance in the Middle East would snap and Turkey would turn to the Beijing Powers and withdraw from Syria. Tensions were beginning to renew themselves between Qatar and Saudi Arabia since both supported opposing factions in Libya. Haftar's forces, supported by the Egyptian air force also launched more offensives towards Libya's coastline and ensure that supplies could arrive safely. The coalition of Haftar's army, allied militias, tribal forces and Egyptian troops launched new attacks on Sirte, Zintan and Nalut, while the march towards Tripoli was still bogged down. Many tribes in Libya also engaged on Haftar's side against Tripoli, while receiving diplomatic goodwill from Tunisia, which sought a Libyan-Libyan solution for the conflict and already supported many tribal leaders before the war, causing tensions with Tripoli. The UAE, as a important backer of Haftar, also conducted a series of airstrikes along its Egyptian counterpart, using F-16 and Mirage 2000 planes to target pro-governmental militias in the north of Libya. The Tripoli government on the other hand encouraged Toubou tribe warriors in the south, as well as anti-Haftar Chadian militias to operate against Haftar's coalition, leading to an increased influx of Chadian rebels and extremists flooding through the southern border of Libya. Chad, which was engaged in clashes with the same rebels that were infiltrating Libya to fight Haftar, accused the government in Tripoli of supporting terrorists in the Sahel, heightening the tensions between those two north African nations as well. Algeria, which had deep ties with Beijing Powers like Russia and China, also positioned itself against Haftar and his supporters in the wake of this new escalation, worrying about Libya's stability and the potential consequences a collapse of its neighbor, while falling under the influence of its rival Egypt. German and Italian naval forces, which were guarding the Libyan coastline against illegal weapon shipments coming from sea, where attacked from the land and air, although it was not clear which side was responsible for this. Both sides accused each other in allegations stating that Egyptian, Emirati and Saudi weapons were being flooded into Libya while others claimed it was Chinese and Russian weaponry being flooded into Libya to support the GNA forces. As the allegations continued, other African countries began mobilizing for war as it would soon hit them hard. Algeria's old rival Morocco began to mobilize and move several divisions towards the Algerian border while also threatening Algeria's ally, the Western Sahara. Mauritania, Mali and Niger had already been mobilizing and fearing that the instability could spread to their lands. Because of rifts forming between Turkey and the GCC, the western Allies on the other hand were still reluctant to oppose Turkey, fearing it may stops fighting against Iraq and Syria, withdraw support to Georgia and Azerbaijan, or for the worst case scenario, join the Revolutionist Powers. Several African nations including the DR Congo, Zambia and Guinea positioned themselves against Haftar and his supporters in the wake of this new escalation.

Europe: Fighting breaks out in the Balkans
In Europe, the movements of both forces slowed extremely after the bloody Kaliningrad offensives and attacks. The Allies kept digging in along the entire front, using razor-wires, trenches, anti-tank mines and several Patriot and THAAD batteries delivered by the US to fortify their positions. The US also brought in waves of heavy firepower deliveries like M1A2 Abrams, M270 MLRSs, COMVATS, modified M134 Miniguns and Browning M2.50 Caliber heavy machine guns, that were used as stationary weapons to further prevent any more CSTO advances towards Germany, Denmark, Slovakia and parts of Poland. European countries allied with the United States tried to provide the biggest artillery piece in it's arsenal and sending it to the front lines and caused unprecedented destruction in the so called "No mans land", the battlefields between the fortifications and positions of both sides. While the Allies had air supremacy, it did give them time to dig in, yet S-400 anti-air missile systems kept building up the casualty count for Allied pilots and prevented any further air strikes into Russian, Belarusian territory and occupied parts of Poland, the Baltics, Finland, Moldova and Ukraine. Russia was also able to foresee the attack patterns of Allied aircraft, especially the NATO F-35-Jets, because of the data it received through Russian spies in Allied countries. In the North, Russia was still forced to take the defense in the Norwegian territory around Murmansk, Severomorsk and Polyarny using mountainous terrain to fortify as well, while preventing allied advances towards its Northern Fleet base by using cruise and standoff missiles, accompanied by shelling from the Barents Sea. In Finland, allied troops of Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK and Canada managed to push the Russian offensive into Lappland back around Inari, forcing Russia to increase its defenses at the northern Russo-Finnish border. With the war raging from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea, tensions were at their final boiling point in the Balkans as well. Due to various NATO-members were at least officially at war Beijing Powers, and Serbia mobilizing for war and gravitating towards the CSTO, the little country of Kosovo felt it's right ambitions to build up an army, as a form for protection in the event that the conflict would spread to the Balkans, since countries like Albania and Montenegro would've become the next targets for Russian attacks. While Kosovo continued its efforts to bolster its own army, as already declared and started in 2018, Albania supported this ambition, and offered to help Kosovo improving its relatively young armed forces. Serbia in response began to increase it's mobilization against Kosovo and began supplying arms to the rouge Bosnian Herzegovinian territory, Republika Sprska and initially condemned the ambition and demanded for Kosovo to cease all expansion activities. These actions were denied and Serbia was finally at edge. Despite massive Serbian protest, Albanian soldiers entered Kosovo and started to train its people, while also bringing in weapons and ammunitions. Serbia, which still held a grudge against NATO for its bombing campaign during the Kosovo and Bosnia wars, demanded the Albanian forces to leave Kosovo immediately, launched allegations on Albania to pursuit a "Greater Albania" doctrine in Kosovo. Ethnic Serbs in the North of Kosovo started to rally together and protest against the Albanian military presence and the Kosovarians build up of forces. The heavily armed Kosovo police force took action against these protesters, and arrested dozens of Serbs, leading Serbia to fully alert its armed forces and gather it along the northern border of Kosovo. There, tensions were already high due to both sides having deployed special units and even military forces prior to the war, due to issues concerning Kosovo requiring entering vehicles to use provisional Kosovars license plates, similar to what Serbia demands entering car drivers to do when coming from Kosovo, although the Kosovar practice was seen as discriminatory against ethnic Serbians in Kosovo. Serbian forces engaged in several border clashes with German, British, French, Slovenian, US and Italian KFOR units stationed in Kosovo since the early 2000s and Kosovarian troops that were mobilized at the Serbian borders, and as soon as the actions against ethnic Serbian rallies lead to the first victims being killed in fights with the police and Albanian forces, Serbia declared war on Kosovo and Albania, officially joining the Beijing Powers in favor of Russia and its allies. The outbreak of hostilities in the Balkans also lead to a mobilization of the newly built up and foreign support self-defense forces of Republica Sprska in Bosnia Herzegovina as a sign of support for Serbia, leading to tensions with the central government of Sarajevo.

South Asia: Bloodshed in the jungles
While fighting continued in and around India, as well as Korea and the seas of Southeast Asia, more and more nations in the region became entangled in the war. After China invaded Bhutan and launched offensives into India in 2023, India was in a struggle to push back Chinese forces from their territory. The US managed to land troops as reinforcements in India, along additional forces from Australia, and in smaller quantities the UK, France and New Zealand. While a majority of the troops took positions against Chinese and Nepalese forces along the northern borders of India while other contingent of forces took positions at the borders with Bangladesh, occupied Bhutan and Myanmar against China's encircling operation. China on the other hand used its political and economic leverage to convince its allies Laos and Cambodia to join the war on the Beijing side. Combined Lao and Chinese forces managed to take Taunggyi, while an offensive into Myitkyina could be halted. Vietnam suffered under the economic pressure it had to endure due to the battles in the South and East China Seas and the blockades both sides imposed against each other. With the regular supply lines from the sea therefore cut, Vietnam was increasingly dependent on its alternative supply route between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh, which was also heavily disrupted. Since Vietnam became continuously weary of China's influence in the years before the war, while also significantly improving its relations with the US and the West as a whole, this lead more and more anti-Chinese sentiments to become obvious in Vietnam. After China demanded Vietnam to let its troops enter its territory in order to keep encircling of India, Vietnam, despite the protest of the remaining pro-Chinese forces of its population, declared war on China, Cambodia and Laos. While Chinese troops invaded Vietnam at the northern border, the Vietnamese air force launched several strikes against the Chinese cities of Gejiu and Qinzhou and Hainan Island. Since the majority of Chinese anti-air defenses were concentrated in the East and at the Indo-Chinese border, many of the airstrikes could not be intercepted, leading to the first hits on inner-Chinese targets since the beginning of the war. ASEAN countries of Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore sent immediate reinforcements to Vietnam as a contingent of Malay, Indonesian and Singaporean forces were sent to the north while the contingent of Thai and Brunei forces were kept as a rear guard and had to hold out until additional reinforcements from Australia could arrive. The Vietnamese navy on the other hand launched a series of hit and run raids against Hainan in the Gulf of Tonkin, while also attacking Chinese vessels in the South China Sea in order to relieve pressure from the maritime trading lines. While Vietnamese ships closed up with allied vessels in the South China Sea, ground troops were starting to invade Laos, threatening Attapeu in the south, and Sekong further north. Chinese troops battered their way through Vietnamese border defenses, leading the Vietnamese to engage in bloody guerilla warfare against the invaders, which caused staggering Chinese casualties in the jungles of Vietnam. The ongoing fighting in Southeast Asia and the Pacific forced the remaining ASEAN nations to send as many forces as possible, in order to prevent being inactively entangled in the war. Pro-Chinese state Cambodia who had already joined the Beijing Powers by declaring war against Vietnam, retaliated with offensives into southern Vietnam with large amounts of tanks and infantry. Australia landed the remaining reinforcements it had and repelled Cambodian attacks while small regiments were sent for northern Vietnam. Chinese forces were later bogged down by the counterattacks and the hit-and-run tactics carried out by the Vietnamese forces now supplied with reinforcements from their allies. While the PLA navy was finally held at a bottleneck in the South China Sea and was forced back. PLA marines from their islands would be sent for Vietnam as the navies of Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei made progress in securing the supply lines for Korea and managing to create safe supply lines for Vietnam. Forces from Myanmar then attacked Thailand to divert some of their forces from Vietnam but the front ends in a deadlock.

European front: The No-Mans Land Battle rages on
With the year nearing its end, both sides at the European Front remained in a stalemate. Since winter was setting in, larger movements of heavy equipment became increasingly difficult, leading Russian logistics to come close to the brink of collapse, due to Russia's forces being overstretched from the Barents Sea all the way to the Black Sea. In the north, the Allies of Scandinavia, Britain and Canada attempted to break the deadlock by engaging in guerilla warfare against the Russians. Similar to German stormtrooper tactics during WW1, and Finnish anti-Soviet warfare during WW2, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish troops used the remaining forests of northern Scandinavia as cover in order to perform surprise raids against pockets of Russian defenses. The allied attack-forces began to use kinds of weapon sights, which combined thermal imaging and image intensifier sights for precision attacks. Since the Russian troops where thinned out due to the large front Russia had to cover, this kind of guerilla warfare proved to be very effective against Russian attempts to break the stalemate. Russia tried on the other hand to compensate for allied raids by executing Iskander and Tochka missile strikes against the North Cape, which saw increased fortification as well. More missile strikes hit targets around Hammerfest, Alta and Kautokeino, further disrupting allied supply lines from Norway into Finland. The NATO defenders were able to remain somewhat mobile though, using ski-mobiles, Viking armored ATVs, unarmored BV-206s and regular snowmobiles, which allowed the Allies to move in pace with their convoys and attacking brigades. In order to protect the NATO defenses in Scandinavia, General Jens Stoltenberg authorized the deployment of the NASAMS SAM systems, which were using American MPQ-64 Sentinel 3D radars to detect both Russian aircraft and missiles, like the Buk-missile. In Poland, both the Allies and the CSTO forces remained in a brutal fight for the so called "New No Mans Land" in Poland, Ukraine and the Romanian-Moldavian border. While the main front lines remained static, the killing fields between the trenches, barricades and other fortifications saw fierce tank and infantry battles, supported by heavy artillery fire and air-, as well as missile strikes. With US M1 Abram and German Leopard 2 tanks fully deployed in the "No Mans Land", remaining NATO forces in Poland conducted small counteroffensives while Spanish, Portuguese and Italian reinforcements in Romania meant that other NATO forces launched small-scale counteroffensives into Moldova and gained parts of Ukraine back. Both sides created heavy guarded openings in their lines, to allow their tanks, mobile artillery pieces and their infantry to march towards the battlefield, while the defenses were continuously improved with anti-air defenses and heavy firepower. While NATO had lacked it in the latter though, and were usually outgunned by the CSTO forces due the atrophy of allied artillery units during the years of the „War on Terror“. This lead among others the UK to use cluster missile munitions, to compensate for their lack of heavy firepower. While NATO infantry relied on the US M2 Browning and M134 miniguns, Russia deployed PKM machine guns where some were filled with ammunition-feeding packs known as Scorpios in order to use them for a portion of their guns as part of armored tanks. Because both sides had dug trenches to hold their gains as much as possible, Russia deployed some of their heaviest artillery pieces to shatter the NATO defenses and allow for a breakthrough to reach Serbia, take Poland and the southern part of the Balkans. Russia deployed 2S19 MSTAs, 2S7 Pions, 2S3 Akatsiyas, Bm-21 Grads, Bm-30 Smerchs and TOS-1 Buratino systems as long-range bombardment while deploying hundreds of Russian 2C4 Tulip self-propelled 240 mm mortars which were modernized and brought into service at the Western Front, creating worries of potential use of nuclear weaponry, since the 2C4 had a nuclear mission in the past during the First Cold War. These weapons proved to be incredibly devastating on the battlefield, but due to their short range, they were susceptible to anti-Tank weaponry and allied counterfire. The Russian lead revisionist forces knew that at this rate, a complete occupation of Poland and Finland would be impossible, leading Putin to change the focus of the European campaigns. Adding insult to injury, Russia deployed their Mi-35s, Ka-50 Akulas and Mi-28 Havocs to support their attacks from the air when on the offensive while deploying the Su-25 Frogfoot, MiG-29s and MiG-25 Foxbats for air-to air combat accompanied by Su-35s. Instead of neutralizing NATO forces by occupying as much territory as possible, he wanted to force the Allies to reevaluate the effort the counteroffensives would take, meaning that the Revisionist Powers at the Western Front now followed a strategy of attrition. They thought if they can hold on their gains, while inflicting heavy damage and casualties on the Allies, they would be able to grind the enemies forces down. Russian and Belarusian armored units also utilized a strategy nicknamed „tank-carrousels“, where tanks and self-propelled artillery pieces shell enemy positions, while being in continuous movement between two specialized trenches, in order to avoid enemy counter-fire. The fighting began to intensify between both sides around Lodz, Russian occupied Lublin, and the cross-section between the Polish and the Ukrainian sector, close to the Slovakian border. A Russian and Belarusian offensive geared towards Rzeszów and Przemyśl was slowed down by allied F-16 Fighting Falcon and F-22 Raptor airstrikes, while German PzH 2000 self-propelled howitzers and US M109s enabled the Allies to counteract the CSTO attacks through Time on Target barrages. The CSTO in retaliation sent fleets of T-90 tanks with BMP-3s and BMP-2s. Polish PT-91s and British Challenger 2s supported by a small Czech and German mechanized division with Marder 2 APCs and Danish F-16s launched desperate offensives but were in a deadlock by the time the winter began to settle in as the offensive was now beginning to halt. In Ukraine, Kazakh and Russian forces had failed to take the territory they lost as their supply lines were now over-stretched and now, the offensives were now at a standstill despite the fighting raging on in Poland. At the same time, Slovakian troops increased their reinforcements for the cross-section, supporting Ukrainian, French, German, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian troops around Stryi, Ivano-Frankivsk, as well as Chernovtsy. The Russians, supported by their CSTO allies, tried to prevent the allied attempt to break through the cross-section, by starting attack waves of Su-27 Flanker family aircraft, Su-25s, MiG-29s and Yak-141 aircraft aiming at diminishing allied air superiority. Those air raids were supported on the other hand by Russian made S-400 surface to air missiles, leading to heavy losses for the Allies in the skies over Ukraine and southeastern Poland. The combination of flanker airstrikes, Iskander and S-500 missiles lead to allied troops losing air cover in the cross-section, which allowed the Revisionist Powers to improve their defenses in Ukraine and Moldova. Russian, Kazakh and Belarusian movements in southwestern Ukraine remained in a halt though, since neither side was able to break through the enemies defenses at the border of the now frozen swamplands of the Danube Delta. CSTO artillery in occupied Moldova, supported by Transnistrian militias and the Russian air force started to shell the Romanian cities Galati, Braila and Tulcea, in order to disrupt allied supply lines at the Black Sea coast. The Russian Black Sea fleet played rather defensively, staying close to the Ukrainian coastline around Crimea and Sevastopol, while conducting several missile attacks against Romanian targets and occasional targets in Georgia near its coastline. In the Balkans, the conflict between Serbia, Kosovo and Albania kept on escalating as well. With the Serbian army entering the north of Kosovo, Albania felt fully justified to fully mobilize its army, while sending it into Kosovo to fight against the Serbs. Serbian artillery and airstrikes managed to disperse the resistance in a way, that allowed the army to threaten Pristina while also slowing the Albanian reinforcements down. With the ongoing war between Serbia, Albania and Kosovo, it inflamed tensions in Bosnia Herzegovina anew and lead to new pro-Serbian protests in Republika Sprska the new Balkan war lead the people of Republika Srpska to feel justified in their attempts to form an auxiliary and militarized force, while stressing that the dissolution of Bosnia is due. Bosnia, which was already officially at war with Russia, although staying inactive, felt that these protests and the following violent clashes against Bosnian security forces were supported by both Serbia and Russia, and after intelligence reports became public that Republika Srpska talked with Serbia about a possible Serbian presence on Bosnian territory, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared war on Serbia. With fellow NATO member Albania fighting against a revisionist partner, both Montenegro and Croatia decided to declare war on Serbia, while sending their first expeditionary forces towards their respective borders with Serbia. At the same time, the Allies in Europe came together and initiated a wide series of joint programs for the development of new weapons, aircraft, tanks and other systems, in order to deal with this kind of warfare against the Revolutionist Powers. Slovenia and Croatia were alarmed by this and began sending reinforcements to Bosnia and Albania as they feared that Serbia and Republika Sprska could host Russian forces and allow for attacks on their own home soil. Macedonia and Greece began to justify their reinforcements for Poland and Ukraine and were caught off guard by Serbian attacks. The 2 countries sent reinforcements for Kosovo to assist KFOR units and Albanian forces. Bosnia was alarmed by the Serbian attacks and was sent armored forces for Republika Sprska to deal with the separatist threat.

„China and Russia in the spotlight": Joe R Biden's death
Even during the war, the United States managed to hold elections and keep it's democratic traditions alive even in the times of war. Incumbent president Joseph R Biden, who suffered from both physical and cognitive deteriorating health did not run for re-election, as he declared several years prior. Instead his vice-president, Kamala Harris ran for president as the candidate of the Democratic Party, while the Republicans once again decided to support former president Donald J. Trump, who campaigned by declaring that he will get the US quick and victoriously out of the war, while attempting to increase American fighting for allies he deemed „plausible“ and strong. Trump ran with the promise that he will make „China pay for everything“ and that he will get the US and allies see through the war towards a total victory, while also increasing „necessary involvement“, meaning to continue American commitment to allies in Europe, Africa and in parts even Japan and South Korea. While this had proved to be appealing for the Republicans and had made up half of the US which still made up almost half of the US political landscape, since they kept seeing Biden as an allegedly illegitimate president who got the US into war and is failing miserably. Kamala Harris ran on a platform that included working together with American allies, while accusing her opponent of working with China and the CSTO in order to interfere with the American Election System. Despite her efforts to paint Trump as "A president with the adversaries" both parties were at each others throats as the polls began to meet at levels like never before, since means Americans were bloody livid and at boiling point and were frustrated by the war and the military setbacks of the Biden administration, while tens of thousands of families already lost family members in combat. Therefore, most were still popular with Trump's "Increased aggression against China" campaign became especially popular, especially for rural American families, many of which suffered from mass-unemployment, housing issues, poverty and in parts even hunger due to the economic consequences of WW3. Because shipping routes were disrupted by the conflict, as well as the confiscation of many transport vessels, resulted in supply chain issues that exceeded by far the supply crisis of 2021. The result were ongoing shortages of countless goods, including food, meaning many supermarkets in the US, but also Europe and other parts of the world were often left with empty shelves, causing hunger especially among the poorer members of society. US intelligence at the same time registered countless attempts from the Revolutionist Powers to interfere in the election, including hacking attacks, disinformation and propaganda campaigns as well as direct and indirect collusion attempts with the Trump campaign, since Trump promised to effectively strengthen US alliances in the war. According to declassified intelligence reports from after WW3, Chinese agents managed to infiltrate the US in order to sow distrust in the democratic system, while sabotaging the election wherever possible. US allies, especially in Europe, watched the election with severe concern, since a re-election of Trump was seen as a massive blow to the allied war effort, which could have resulted in European defeat. Despite an incredibly close race, very similar to the 2020 election, and reports of irregularities in the digital voting systems, Donald J. Trump failed to accomplish victory in the November 2024 election, prompting a political earthquake among the allied leadership. Trump's election caused unprecedented riots and uprisings in the US, due to Democratic supporters rejecting his rule. Joe Biden decided to step up to the plate of the Democrats and stick to Kamala's claims of Trump being the "President with the adversaries." While he had one of his re-election speeches in front of the White House for his second term, he collapsed onto the floor in front of live television and supporters. An ambulance was called and he was rushed to the hospital while the speech had to be shut down. The doctors would later find concluded that Biden's health and at his age of 82, he wouldn't last long. When other democrats and Kamala visited him in the hospital, he was at a state of dying breath and his last words were "Secure a victory." Biden would be pronounced dead at 21:30 hours. There was a massive cry of outrage and disbelief all over the United States and questions began popping up. At first, they suspected Trump and the Republicans had sabotaged his speech so they could win the election, but this was debunked by the CIA. Then other questions were asked if this was an act of espionage by the Revolutionist Powers. The FBI then stormed the hideouts of suspected Chinese spies but no evidence was found that could prove Biden was assassinated or poisoned. Then, the doctors were interrogated on how Biden died, they stated that Biden died of a stroke and it was found during his treatment that a stroke had occurred during his speech. Despite Trump's popular campaign, Kamala Harris became the next president of the United States and was also declared the first female president of the United States. Kamala soon declared her cabinet would begin making up for the losses in Europe and Asia and began to help the Allies at the "Desperate Hour." The newly elected president would then announce she would try to find ways to resecure supplies for the US.

Africa: Fighting spreads south
Since the escalation of conflict in Libya continued at the beginning of 2025, tensions in Northern Africa started to boil up even more. The Allied backed forces of General Haftar saw a series of victories, in form of successfully taking Zintan and Sirte, allowing them to close a corridor between government controlled areas between the Nalut and Jabal al Gharbi region. Despite the victories against the GNA, and increased offensives led by Haftar and his allies, it only increased the amount of refugees fleeing and trying to seek shelter in neighboring Algeria and Tunisia, while migrants from the Sahel faced heavy struggles to reach Libya and its coastline due to the escalating fighting. This new refugee crisis intensified the tensions between Algeria and Haftar's coalition, since the north African state tried for months to mediate between both parties in favor of the originally UN backed government of Tripoli. France and Greece sent a small number of soldiers to Libya to secure Libyan oil and the Southern Mediterranean coastline. This signaled the support for Haftar, as well as the Allies having the willingness to defend their own interests in Africa and also signaled that the Allies would try anything to deter Beijing's aggression in the continent. But despite the intention, the increased allied activity in North Africa lead to Chinese and Russian approaches of their own, especially towards Sudan, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo. China and Russia began offering those countries to cut their debts it already in the past to pressure its will on Africa's nations, in exchange for military support against allied troops stationed in Africa. China was only using this as a diversion for the deployment of their own PMCs in other African countries and tie down Allied forces that could've been deployed at the main frontlines like in Europe or the Middle East. Pressured by the debts towards China and Russia while also receiving economic and militaristic promises and benefits after the conflict, Sudan, DR Congo and Zimbabwe began attacking their neighboring countries with the presence of Allied soldiers. This lead to Sudan and the DR Congo attacking South Sudan which had a presence of US troops. Sudan continued with small attacks on Chad which had a presence of both French and American forces and the DR Congo continued with attacks on Uganda which also hosted US soldiers. Algeria jumped on this with attacks on Mali which hosted German, Belgian, British, US and French forces and small attacks on Niger which had hosted more American, French, German and Italian forces. While Mauritania was unharmed at first, they would have to prepare for any attacks by Algerian forces. The DR Congo continued with their attacks by attacking Republic of Congo as they demanded a unification act of which, Congo refused. The DR Congo declared war on Congo with attacks along the border. US forces in DR Congo were already captured when hostilities broke out although a few forces in South Sudan joined the fight against DR Congo and Sudan. Because of the escalation, Chad, Uganda, Mali, Niger, Congo and Mauritania declared war against their attackers and Burundi and Rwanda joined with the Allies since they feared that the DR Congo would attack them, while France and the UK declared war against the DRC and Sudan due to some of their ties with attacked African countries. Adding insult to injury, Saudi Arabia expelled Sudan from the coalition in Yemen and all Sudanese forces in Yemen were expelled and Senegal sent their troops to Yemen via UAE C-17s. Meanwhile in the north, the ongoing operations of Haftar and his supportive coalition lead to once again condemnation from Algeria, and after shells fired from pro-Haftar forces accidentally hit Algerian territory, Algeria decided to intervene on Tripoli's behalf. The Algerian air force attacked allied targets besieging the areas around Tripoli, while Algerian ground troops engaged in first battles with the coalition around Ubari. After Algeria's entrance into the war, and the attacks against allied troops conducted by the Beijing Powers, the Allies pressured their allies of Tunisia and Morocco to intervene as the Sahel countries were already being attacked by Algerian and Colognes forces. Tunisia and Morocco obliged as Morocco received reinforcements from Britain, Spain and Portugal to protect British Gibraltar while Tunisia received reinforcements from Italy and France. Moroccan, British, Spanish and Portuguese forces launched offensives along the Algerian border but to no avail, the mountainous terrain made it difficult for large formations to get across and even when Algeria was caught off guard, they managed to respond but both sides failed to break the deadlock as the harsh terrain had restricted infantry to only move through and fighting would ensue. French, American, Tunisian and Italian forces launched attacks on GNA positions in northern Libya supported by Egyptian jets carrying out airstrikes against GNA forces. Chadian and allied troops halted the offensive coming from Sudan, while reinforcements from Mali and Niger started to pour into the Sahel country. At the same time, the Allies demanded that Algeria should stop its intervention in Libya, which was rejected by the Algerian government. Algeria on the other hand wanted the allied support for Haftar to be halted. Since both sides rejected each others demands, allied troops from Mali, Niger, and Chad started to attack Algerian forces in Libya and along their respective borders, while Allied soldiers assisting the Burundian, Ugandan and Rwandan forces attacked the DR Congo while supporting the Republic of Congo in a fight of it's own while receiving reinforcements from France.

Asian Front: Calamity and bloodshed ensues
While another continent was now entangled in the war as well, the conflict in Southeast Asia escalated even more. The Vietnamese attack along the Chinese border came to a halt, and after massive air strike and missile attack campaigns, the Chinese, taking advantage of its by now mobilized population, launched a counteroffensive into northern Vietnam, creating a corridor towards its ally Laos. While in southern Vietnam, the attacks into Laos were successful, leading to Vietnamese infantry formations to take Ban Bak, Chevan and the outskirts of Attapeu near the Xe River. Myanmar, in support of China, launched a series of small attacks against Thailand but ended in a retreat due to Karen Liberation uprisings and forced Burmese forces back. While Cambodia attempted attacks of its own into Vietnam, they were forced to retreat and allowed for Vietnamese forces to move into Cambodia as well. The first wave of attacks were targeting Svay Rieng and Prey Veng, while the Vietnamese army was also able to push into Cambodia's southwestern flank with the help of its superior navy. As a result, the Vietnamese were able to take Kampot, Sihanoukville and Koh Kong. Meanwhile, the Burmese offensives had been halted and Thai, Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean forces began pushing into Burmese territory and Chinese forces were called to the front to assist in a counterattack and parts of Myanmar were recaptured, but with heavy Burmese and Chinese casualties in the process as Australia and the United States had now landed troops in both India and ASEAN countries. The Americans and Indians agreed that both US and Australian forces would be deployed to stop the Chinese led invasion and the Americans agreed to assist the Indian forces against Pakistan, while also refraining from calls that India should join the fight against its close partner Russia. While Australia as a member of the so called "Quad" also started talks with India for troop deployment in Southeast-Asia, the Indian navy engaged with its Malaysian and Indonesian counterpart in smaller skirmishes with the Chinese as part of an attempt to clear a path to the South China Sea through the Malakka strait, while also securing the Andaman sea for the Allies. Thailand, which was wedged between the warring countries was already having struggle to keep its borderlands tight. While they had allowed Indonesian, Singaporean, Malay and a small number of their forces to attack Myanmar, they were facing trouble as their economy was beginning to face stagnation as the blockades from both the Allies and Revolutionist Powers including the disruption of maritime trade took a hard hit, while the tourism industry broke down completely. Because Thailand was listed as a major non-NATO-ally and was connected the US, Thailand saw no choice but to join the war on the allied side, declaring war against Laos and Cambodia, while still being hesitant to to do so against China. The Thai army decided to support the Vietnamese offensive against Cambodia, by pushing towards the western Cambodian cities of Battambang, Sisophon and Samraong, stopping around the Tonle Sap lake area. The Thai forces also simultaneously launched a invasion into Laos, taking Pak Lai and even overrunning the Lao capital of Vientiane, forcing its leadership to escape to Luang Prabang. With an increasing number of armies fighting each other in the jungles of Southeast-Asia, both sides started to engage in bloody guerilla warfare against each other, mimicking the carnages of the Vietnam-War. The fighting nations tried to blend into their environment and the local population, while conducting a series of hit-and-run-raids against the respective advancing enemy, in order to inflict massive casualties and disrupt the supply lines of larger unprotected army formations. As a result, casualties on both sides mounted rapidly, leading to an increased domestic outcry against the military operations in Southeast-Asia. The Vietnamese, Burmese, but also the Cambodians and Laos resorted to arming civilians and turning them into militias against the Chinese and Allies respectively. As a result of this kind of guerilla warfare, both sides started military operations against insurgencies in civilian areas, from cities, to towns, leading to several massacres against the population, especially in northern Vietnam. In the meantime at sea, naval forces from India, Malaysia and Singapore were able to push PLA Navy ships out of the Malakka Strait and with the Vietnamese, Thai and Filipino navies, formed a blockade against PLA ships and managed to keep their coastlines safe.

Middle East Front: The Allies Advance
While the Allies were stuck in Europe, as well as being unable to break the Chinese defenses in Asia, they saw an increase in the Middle East Front they actually saw more success in the Middle East. After years of relentless fighting and aerial bombardment, the Beirut Storming lead to a clear Israeli victory, leaving Lebanon as one of the first Revolutionist Power nations to fall and come under mostly Allied occupation. But it was not a total victory as Hezbollah fighters still engaged the IDF in urban warfare with strangleholds and pockets of resistance all over Lebanon, while continuing to fire rockets into Israeli territory as part of their terror campaign. Since the years of fighting diminished Hezbollah's arsenal, while disrupting its Iranian supply lines in Syria and Iraq, the Shia militia faced increased material shortages, rendering its terror attacks mostly symbolic in nature. In Syria, the pressure on Damascus remained high, even though the usage of chemical weapons during the siege of the city lead to thousands of Allied and civilian casualties. The Syrian campaign of Arab and Allied coalition achieved several tactical victories, in the form of cutting down Iranian fighters flowing into Syria through Iraq, leading the Iranian reinforcements isolated from their reinforcements. Allied troops were even able to push as far North as Deir ez-Zor, where their advance was halted by the presence of Turkish forces which were in a cleaning operation against remaining Syrian forces. While Kurdish fighters launched offensives against Syrian forces and cutting off their supply lines and forced Syrian forces into retreat and took pressure off of the coalition. SDF and YPG forces then took control of the Dayr As Zawr region and lead towards the very first negotiations with western allied forces for peace and protection. In Iraq, the Revolutionist Powers faced even more setbacks. Allied troops were able to close in to the now fortified Iranian border, after the Battle of Basra. This allied advance forced the revisionists to mostly retreat behind the Euphrates, Shatt al Arab and Tigris rivers, while also fortifying Al Kut and Baghdad. After keeping the majority of its naval assets in a safe distance in the Arabian Sea, the US decided to more offensively support their ships that were already in the Gulf of Oman following some breakthroughs in the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians used their Khalij Fars anti-ship missiles to inflict as much damage as possible to the incoming waves of US vessels, while the Americans started a more aggressive bombing campaign not only against Revolutionist targets along the frontline, but also against targets in Iran itself. Continuing to add insult to injury, Peshmerga fighters with the help of US airstrikes launched heavy assaults against the Iraqi forces and pockets of ISIS forces and Turkish forces officially entered Iraq and began several offensives along forcing Iraqi forces to Baghdad and now, Iran was stuck with the Khuzestan province threatened. Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan sent forces to assist in a counteroffensive to take place. The US used the British base of Diego Garcia to launch bomber strikes against Iranian targets, while American Superhornet jets took off from the only 2 aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea. The Iranian targets hit included Bandar Lengeh, Minab, Buscher and Borazjan, while the Iranians themselves were able to use their air defenses to nibble away at the US jet fleet. The lack of sufficient numbers of SAM systems, as well as American edge in jamming technology lead to the neutralization of a large fraction of Iran's anti-air defenses, leading to secret talks between Russian and Iranian officials about Iran possibly acquiring the Russian made S-400 system, while also talking about requiring S-500s, T-90s and Su-27s while debating with it's CSTO allies whether to send more forces to Iran to prepare for a counteroffensive in Iraq and negotiating on whether to only have the CSTO forces as a vanguard and a protection force in Tehran. The barrages of allied missile strikes, mostly using Tomahawks and similar weapons, lead to the majority of Iranian surface vessels in the Arabian Gulf being destroyed, forcing the remaining ships to take a defensive stand around Iranian islands in the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, the Iranian backed Houthi rebels began to tied down large Saudi formations and began to slow down the Saudi offensives in Yemen. Apart from a poorly trained army from a few elite divisions, the Saudi forces lost grip of part of their territory. With Senegalese forces now deployed, the UAE took charge coordinating attacks with Senegal, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and Bahrain in counterattacks along with Academi mercenaries and launched multiple counteroffensives against the Houthi rebels. Turkey assisted the coalition with a small force and launched offensives supporting the coalition while indirectly coordinating attacks with the UAE. Despite the extra forces, pockets of Houthi resistance kept attacking convoys supplying Saudi forces, while also further disrupting the Saudi flow of oil through the Red Sea. This ongoing assaults lead the Saudis to demand more support from the US against the Yemeni rebels, which was met with heavy resistance from the American congress, since Saudi Arabia's Yemen-campaign was a source of grave criticism in America, even before WW3 broke out. At the same time, Israel increased its air-, and missile strikes against targets and Gaza, while also sending in ground forces into the West Bank, to prevent additional Palestinian insurgencies and terror attacks. Meanwhile in the Caucasus, parts of Armenia was already occupied by the Turkish army, as the Turkish army had to concentrate on both Europe and the Middle East and gave Armenia time to reconsolidate and prepare for counterattacks. While the Azeris, who were able to fully consolidate their gains in Nagorno-Karabakh, started negotiations with Turkey about how much Armenian territory should go to Azerbaijan. The remaining Russian troops in Armenia, which were already unharmed throughout the Caucasus campaign due to them only being as part of a peacekeeping force, were called back to Russia in order to be used as reinforcements along the Western Front, as well as expeditionary forces for a potential arctic offensives scheduled for later the same year and filled the hole with forced conscripts from Uzbekistan. The Russians retreated through Nakhchivan into Iran, and were brought to Russia with the help of the Caspian Fleet. The Russian retreat was seen as an act of treason by the Armenians, who were left behind to fight the Turks on their own. Civil resistance, as well as Armenian guerilla insurgencies against the Turkish invaders lead to accused massacres against Armenian civilians, for which both sides blame each other. The Armenians used these incidents for propaganda, comparing the massacres with the Armenian Genocide. While these massacres were only allegations, it took a toll on morale for the Allies as they had to deal with everything flung around them. Turkish forces in Georgia were forced out as Russian air and naval strikes had forced the 2 countries into a constant retreat but had time to reconsolidate in Tbilisi.

European front: Acts of collusion
In the helm of the European front, both NATO and the CSTO were locked in a stalemate. The thousands of casualties, and the lack of of any significant gains lead to growing opposition against the war overall. Europe's capitals were haunted by increasing numbers of anti-war protests, some of which became noticeably critical against NATO and the American war effort, despite only a relatively small American presence in Europe. Hungary was in a political schism as the Right-Wing leader of Hungary, Viktor Orban offered to mediate between Russia and NATO, while other Hungarian members urged Viktor to reinforce the front in Poland and Ukraine, as a form of potential peace offers. While Italy's Lega Party sent offers to Moscow, in order to mediate peace offers on their terms. In the same time, CSTO forces struggled to supply their forces in Poland, Finland and Ukraine due to the length of the battlefields. Logistics proved to be a fragile area for the Russians, leading to shortages of supplies at various sectors of the front. In order to relieve pressure on its forces, Russia once again resorted to a terror campaign, to break the already wavering will and morale of the Allies. Russian Iskander, Kazakh Scuds and Belarusian Tochka ICBM systems stationed in occupied Poland, Ukraine and Kaliningrad, launched volleys of missiles at European targets, mostly civilian infrastructure, creating panic and chaos among the European population. Especially European capital cities were hit the heaviest, while additionally, railroads, bridges, tunnels, airports and roads were heavily damaged or destroyed, in order to sever the supply lines in Europe. Russia also tried to intimidate the US by putting its newer weapons at display, leading Russia to deploy its young Avantgarde hypersonic missiles against London and Paris, the capitals of the United Kingdom and France, which was the first time during WW3 that mainland British and French targets were hit. Russia therefore tried to demonstrate that it was able to penetrate even the defenses of other nuclear powers. The hypersonic missile strikes remained very limited though, because Russia did not want to waste too many Avantgardes for conventional attacks, while also preventing the provocation of a possible nuclear counterattack from the French or British. The Hungarian delegation of Orbán and the Italian Lega Party in the meantime returned from talks with Russian officials, but instead of pushing for a peace treaty under European conditions, they publicly advocated for peace in Russian favor, calling it a "peace of understanding and common interests". The German AfD Party later got involved with their own talks with Moscow and like delegations of Orban and the Italian Lega Party, they advocated for peace in Russia's favor and soon, cracks began to form in the Allied command structure as several NATO units began being shifted to the wrong part of the battlefield. One of the most known incidents was the Airland Incident, where a Belgian infantry unit, supported by French armored unit and 2 Spanish units were inavertedly sent from Poland back to Germany and was swapped by a Danish unit. Jens Stoltenberg quickly concluded that these incidents were caused by Russian officials supporting political groups that took an anti-war stance. Right-wing conservative and leaders and politicians all over Europe began to adopt this standpoint, leading representatives from Italy, Hungary and Czechia to advocate for peace under the current conditions from Russia. They justified this move by declaring that the war was largely the fault of China and the US, and that Russia simply defended its own legitimate security interests, referring to NATOs eastwards expansion as justification. At the same time, the Italians, who became quite sympathetic of the Revolutionist Powers in the past because of their support during the Covid-19 pandemic, stopped fighting and remained only defensive in their actions. Other political parties in countries like France and Germany also joined this chorus, meaning that representatives from the French Rassemblement National and the German AfD party proclaimed that peace with Russia would be vital for Europe's survival, while blaming the war on globalists and liberalism. Soon, acts of collusion were being sparked against NATO by the political parties and they would attempt to plan ways to get NATO countries out of the conflict by any means necessary. The Lega Party began to bribe members of the Italian Government while Orban continued to convince the Hungarian Parliament that while they would still support NATO, they would pull their forces back and only allow for logistical support and try to push peace terms with Putin and put an end to the conflict. While right-wing fractions all over Europe received positive feedback from their followers, there were also massive backlashes because of this. New protests emerged alongside the already existing pacifist demonstrations, that criticized the Russia-sympathizers, leading to additional chaos and civil unrest on the continent. The allied leadership in Europe also massively criticized the voices calling for peace in Russian favor, leading to heated political discussions, changes of personnel and even investigations. Some of these investigations, that were described by their targets as "conspiracies" against peace, found evidence of collusion between Russia and right-wing politicians from various nations. While an investigation went on about the political parties, a whistleblower revealed that Orbán and his associates received offers during their meetings in Moscow of potentially getting ethnic Hungarian territory in Ukraine and Romania, in exchange for pro-Russian diplomacy and neutrality in the conflict, and would effectively make Hungary part of the Revolutionist Powers. Another whistleblower stated that with the bribes the Lega Party was handing out, it would make Italy effectively remove all forces from combat and give it pro-Russian diplomacy and neutrality during the war. The Italian president, Segrio Mattarella was outraged by the bribes and immediately began a crackdown on members of the Lega Party and he removed those from the Italian Parliament who had received bribes from the Lega Party. Czechia and Bulgaria followed soon with crackdowns on political parties that had been collaborating with the Russians. Obran would refuse to budge despite many in the Hungarian Parliament pressuring him to increase reinforcements to assist NATO forces, while the Bundeswehr launched a crackdown on the AfD Party and found out that they had been also bribing members of the German Bundestag to get Germany in a neutral state of the conflict. These political squabbles lead to disunity amongst the Allies, and therefore a slowdown of their overall war effort at the Western Front. At the same Time, a series of terror attacks in Ireland and Northern Ireland occurred, all of which were claimed by the so called "New IRA", which already conducted terror attacks on the Irish island in the years before the Brexit of 2020/2021. Originally, the New IRA was mostly insignificant in Northern Ireland, but British security agencies noticed increased Russian efforts to support and encourage these IRA dissidents, in order to drag the attention of the UK away from the battlefield. Multiple car bombs were detonated in front of British security targets, like police stations, and new military sites that were opened because of the world war. Bomb attacks were also conducted against targets in Great Britain, and even though the New IRA took responsibility for these attacks, the British secret service suspected that these attacks were rather committed by Russian sleeper agents, in order to inflame conflict with the Irish terrorists. Even during these terror attacks, the UK increased their security efforts in North Ireland and lead to the deployment of a token force of a few hundred soldiers in Belfast, as well as a dozen soldiers in Londonderry, where the attacks occurred more frequently. However, tragedy struck the UK as Queen Elizabeth II died from the consequences of pneumonia. Leaving the Kingdom asking who will take the throne. Prince Charles, knowing about his low popularity as well as Britain's desire for a fresh leadership, stepped down as a heir of the throne in favor of his older son William, making him King of the United Kingdom. While the European allies struggled to maintain their unity and focused attention, the war at the Balkan Front was still in movement. Serbia fully invaded the now rogue Bosnian territory of Republika Srpska, in support of local ethnic Serbs, while also attempting to outflank both Croatia and Montenegro. This lead to the Battle of Sarajevo, where the Bosnians lost to the numerically superior Serbs, allowing those to secure their positions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while also shelling the Croatian and Montenegrin borders respectively. Italy and Spain sent reinforcements to Albania to support their offensives to liberate Pristina while Slovenia, France and Italy sent reinforcements for Croatia, but by the time the Italian and Spanish reinforcements got their, they were too late. The first Battle in Pristina resulted in a Serbian victory, forcing Kosovar soldiers to retreat where they met up with Greek, Macedonian, Italian, Albanian and Spanish reinforcements and formed a line from Pejë to Gjilan. NATO aircraft launched from Montenegro, Albania and Croatia started to strike targets in Serbia, including Novi Pazar, while Sombor and Apatin were hit by Croatian airstrikes. As a response to NATOs bombing campaign, Serbia decided to retaliate by deliberately targeting civilian areas and densely populated with its Sumadija rocket launchers, that were able to hit targets as far away as 175 miles with four-hundred-millimeter projectiles and precision guidance. Therefore, after the initial air campaign, NATO forces launched a counter invasion of Serbia which lead the latter mentioned border cities to be taken by Croatian and Slovenian troops, which were supported by Italian, Portuguese and Spanish reinforcements. Romania also initiated an offensive against Serbia, leading to air-raids not only against the Romanian-Serbian border, but also Belgrade itself. The Romanians received reinforcements from the UK, Canada, France, Bulgaria and Slovakia, while pressure mounted on Hungary to join the campaign in the Balkans. Greece also joined the coalition against Serbia, leading Greek troops to join their Albanian counterparts in Kosovo despite souring relationships between Greece and Albania. Even though Serbia was under pressure from multiple fronts, it was still able to inflict casualties on NATO aircraft, due to its purchase of Russian S-400 air defenses. Meanwhile, the Allies at the European Front saw themselves forced to prepare for the worst, meaning a potential CSTO breakthrough and advance towards the German border, leading them to extensively fortify the Polish-German border as a last line of defense. This heavy defended line was nicknamed as the „Merkel -Line“, meant as a mockery reminiscent of the Hindenburg-, and Siegfried-Lines of the Germans during the last world wars. Due to still massive outbreaks of COVID-19 among soldiers on both sides, the Allies started to introduce new military gear to wear for their soldiers, like helmets that included visors that covered the mouth and nose area.

War in the North: The Arctic War begins
Because Russia was facing pressure due to the stalemate in Europe, and their setbacks in the Middle East, Putin began to look for ways to throw off the Allies while also disrupt the supply lines and cut off potential resources for NATO. As a result, the Russians decided to start a campaign in the Arctic, which was rich in resources and close to allied nations like the US and Canada. While the Americans stationed almost all of their naval forces in the Pacific close to the Eastern Front, the Allies of Europe kept their vessels in the North and Baltic Sea, while also guarding the Mediterranean, meaning the waters of the Arctic were almost defenseless due to the lack of naval assets. Russia, which already occupied the Norwegian island of Svalbard, exploited this by sending ten submarines of its Northern Fleet east of Bear island into the Greenland Sea. Six submarines were dispatched from Murmansk and Severomorsk which were Akula class, and where used to deliver big payloads of cruise missiles to the American Thule base in Greenland. The attack took out an important missile-warning system of the US, while the few Danish vessels present in the Sea of Greenland were destroyed by the submarines as well. These ships conducted coastguard missions, and their destruction, as well as the attack on Greenland overall forced the Danes to take a more aggressive approach against Russia. Royal Danish troops from mainland Denmark, as well as conscripts from the Faroe islands were mobilized in order to be send to Greenland. With no considerable military forces present to oppose them, Russian special forces were landed on Greenland, leading to concerns about potential operations against continental North America. Denmark and Greenland including the Faroe Islands recieved support from Norway and Canada. Canadian forces landed in west of Greenland, while squadrons of the Canadian Royal air force were launched from the Alert airbase in the far north of the country. Russia responded to that by launching its own squadrons of MiG-31 interceptors, MiG-29s, Tu-160s and Tu-95, as well as Tu-142 bombers from bases in Svalbard and the Russian Nagurskoye airbase. The Russian aircraft were able to intercept the Canadian aircraft while still suffering casualties themselves. When the Canadian air force retreated back to its own airspace, Russia's Tu-95 bombers attacked the Canadian Alert airbase, completely destroying it in the process and destroying most of the Canadian aircraft as well. On the ground in Greenland, the Danish Slædepatruljen Sirius elite navy unit was the only military resistance that faced the landed Russian Spetsnaz special forces. Because this Danish unit only had 14 soldiers, were equipped with Glock 17s and had WWI Lee Enfields and used dogsleds for transport, they were pushed back hard but held up a fierce resistance against the Spetsnaz forces. This was heavily exploited in Allied propaganda comparing it with Leonidas' 300 Spartan fighters against the Persians. The Spetsnaz forces tried to gain hold of the artic inaccessible area, while trying to disrupt Greenland's communication with the outside world. The US saw itself forced to react to this escalation in the Arctic as well, leading it send the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit to Iceland, in order to prepare for counteroffensives with their Danish, Canadian, Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian allies. The troops were then flown from ships with the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, in order to set up safe landing zones in the south of Greenland. Being faced with a situation they couldn't handle, the Russian Spetsnaz forces decided to call off the Greenland campaign as they were now faced against their enemies with better equipment and had a numerical advantage. The landed Russian special forces retreated with the help of Russian submarines coming from Svalbard, and left with several casualties counted when the boarded the ships. Before all Spetsnaz forces fled, they placed traps and ambushes for the incoming Allies and resulted in both civilian and military casualties in Greenland.

Indian front: Trouble arises
Because of the Asian front escalation, India's fronts were met with turmoil and confronted with a multitude of issues to contend to, stretching from the Indo-Pakistani front, over the Himalaya, Bangladesh, Southeast-Asia and the Indian Ocean. While India kept received more reinforcements from Australia and the United States in order to fight China, Indian forces managed to push back against Bangladeshi incursions in the Bengal region. Bangladeshi forces secretly supplied heavy weaponry to secessionist insurgencies in Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, Mizoram and in part even Jammu-Kashmir, leading to guerilla campaigns in inaccessible areas like waterways, jungles and high hill tracks. The Bangladeshi-backed campaign included suicide attacks in major Indian cities, like Chennai and Kolkata, while Pakistan began to back Jihadist suicide bombings and attacks against Indian targets. Despite all of these tactics, the Indian Navy managed to destroy the whole of the Bangladeshi Navy, while the Indian Air Force wrecked the entire Chinese naval base in Bangladesh which was a part of the Belt Road Initiative, although some ships escaped to Eritrea. While the Indian Army advanced through the harsh wetlands of the Indus Delta, launching a counteroffensive for Karachi, the last of Pakistan's ASM batteries were finally destroyed and India began preparing for an amphibious assault on southern Pakistan. Though the Battle of Panjub became stagnant though as Pakistani, Uzbek, Turkmen, Afghan and Kyrgyzstani forces managed to turn the urbanized areas into ambushes and tripwire traps for the advancing Indian forces though resorting towards an urban warfare approach. After the bloody Battle of Karachi, the Indian army, supported by American and Australian special forces, managed to consolidate its gains in southern Pakistan. With India advancing on almost all sides, Pakistan's top generals asked increasingly for nuclear release, but were denied by Islamabad. The Kashmir front remained in a stalemate as the Indian Army, not only had to contend with the Pakistani Army, but Chinese, Kazakh, Kyrgyzstani, Tajikistani and Uzbek troops. The Indian approach was also slowed down by Muslim protestors rioting against the advancing soldiers. These riots, along with the increasing number of suicidal attacks lead to a violent Indian crackdown against Muslim protestors in all of India. Several hundred civilians were killed during these uprisings, causing accusations of human rights violations and an massive outcry in the Muslim world. The RSS, a paramilitary branch of Narendra Modis leading party, committed several acts of violence against Muslims all over the nation, while thousands of Muslims ended up being imprisoned in Indian detention camps, specifically built for the detention of Muslims and other non-Hindu minorities. Many leading political figures of Modis party openly rallied against Muslims and categorized them as threats and „traitors“, leading the RSS to receive a wide array of authorizations, including a greenlight for violence, if it was, quote „necessary for the security of the Indian people“. While most Allied countries stayed silent on this matter, Saudi Arabia and Turkey threatened India that they would cut their economic relations and cut trading if India failed to end their crackdown and comply with Turkey and Saudi Arabia's demands. Algeria decided to greenlight itself with humanitarian aid being sent to Pakistan and claimed that it was to help Pakistani civilians. India on the other hand, refused this and claimed it was a masquerade and that the containers were actually full of weapons to support the Pakistani forces. At the same time, in the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka, which was under a year of the Indian blockade, finally capitulated to India and lead to a full-on occupation of the small island nation. 90% of Sri Lankans opposed the occupation, and resisted Indian occupation forces. India retaliated with harsh crackdowns on the protesters, while other Sri Lankans suffered from malnutrition and illness and died because of the blockade. Despite the increased guerilla effort of Bangladesh, India managed to not only retake the West Bengal region, but also Chittagong in Bangladesh's East, cutting it of from Chinese supplies coming from Sikkim. India planned to use this advance to drive a wedge between Nepal and Bhutan, while hoping to liberate the latter from Chinese occupation. China attempted to retaliate against India's gains by deploying long-range metropoles, that were already being supplied by Pakistan and Bangladesh in the suicide bombing and attacks, in order to create confusion and panic. It was an attempt to divert India's attention from the Himalayas, but they had resisted to use the missiles on big cities like New Delhi, as it would make the Indians confuse it for a nuclear attack by the Chinese. These missile strikes on the other hand remained limited in their scope, because its arsenal suffered shortage, while China's main focus remained on the Pacific.

African Front: The fighting breaks out in East Africa
In Africa, both the Allies and Revolutionist Powers continued to fight over resources and influence throughout the continent. While North Africa was already engaged in a total conflict, more fronts began to emerge as well. In eastern Africa, the DRC was already entangled in a war between Uganda as it hosted US soldiers. Colognes forces also began to fight in South Sudan in support of their ally Sudan. Despite fighting South Sudan in the South, and allied forces in Chad in the West, the Sudanese regime also opened a front in the East against Ethiopia in order to cut off the allied supplies of gold, as well as to weaken the financial resources of the Allies, while also targeting US troops in Ethiopia. Another reason for Sudan targeting Ethiopia was because of unsettled border disputes between the 2 nations in the farmlands of Al-Fashaga region which was reinflamed at the end of 2020 and at the start of 2021. Ethiopia then declared war on Sudan and received military support from the United States, France and United Kingdom. In the Horn of Africa, both the Allies and Beijing Powers attempted to secure access to the Red Sea in order to protect this vital vein of global maritime traffic. With aircover provided by allied forces on the Arabian Peninsula, naval assets from the US, France and the UK, despite being harassed by the Houthi rebels at the Yemeni coastline, managed to enter the Red Sea and engaged in its biggest naval battle of the war, when the allied fleet fought against a minor Russian naval presence at the Sudanese naval base of Port Sudan, destroying the base and most Russian vessels in the process. China engaged with secret talks between Eritrea and Somalia, using their high debt as a leverage to pressure them to join the Revolutionist Powers' cause. Meanwhile, the Allies attempted to counter Chinese influence in the Horn of Africa in the geopolitical important country of Djibouti which hosted a plethora of foreign bases. This was the reason why the First Battle of Djibouti saw not only American, but also French, Spanish, German and Japanese troops fighting against the forces in China's only foreign military base. The Djibouti government remained inactive as it heavily relied on Chinese money as well, the Italian forces, after cracking down on the Lega Party, sent forces to assist US led forces to fight the Chinese forces. Saudi Arabia, reluctantly joined and sent forces as part of a rear guard for US, Spanish, German, Japanese and French forces. After 2 weeks of a siege, the Chinese base in Djibouti fell to US-lead forces. The defeat in Djibouti forced China to pressure Djibouti's neighbors to take decisive action against Djibouti and Ethiopia, in order to deny access to the Red Sea, China invoked Eritrea, a former enemy of Ethiopia as well as invoking territorial conflicts in Djibouti. China promised that if Eritrea was successful, it would receive full-on economic support and a cut in debts. Somalia was persuaded by targeting its growing anti-American sentiment due to years of indiscriminate drone strikes performed by the US, as well as its own border disputes with Ethiopia over the Ogaden desert region. This lead both Eritrea and Somalia to attack allied forces either in neighboring countries or inside their own territory. Eritrean forces engaged in bloody fighting against Ethiopia as well as Djibouti, where the Allies dug in after the Chinese defeat. Reports came up that Eritrean troops in the breakaway region of Tigray where tolerated by Ethiopia, since both Eritrea and Ethiopia were engaged in bloody fighting against the insurgency of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) as recently as 2020 forward. Somalia on the other hand tried to seize US assets and forces inside its own borders, while also attacking disputed areas in the self-declared state of Somaliland as well as Ogaden, where the Somali forces supported troops of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, a separatist group of ethnic Somalis trying to break away from Ethiopia. The Somalis fighting against the US forces were intercepted by the Turkish and UAE troops. Troops from the UAE and Israel were forced to open the gates of their bases and attack Eritrean forces and supported by aircraft from Saudi Arabia, much to Allied pleasure, while Turkish forces and other forces from the UAE opened their gates and performed small-scale attacks, similar to the US Invasion of Panama. The joint Turkish and Emirati attacks in Somalia and joint Israeli and Emirati attacks in Eritrea had given the US the decision to send heavy equipment to their allies to support them and declare the UAE a Major Non-NATO Ally. Somalia's entry into the conflict also caught Ugandan, Kenyan, Ethiopian and Burundian forces of the African Union Mission to Somalia in the fray, leading to them declaring war on Somalia as well. Kenya, which was close to the US and UK, while hosting bases for those 2 countries, decided to join the fighting and sent forces to Uganda to defend against the Colognes forces, South Sudan against the Sudanese forces and sent forces of their own and entered Somalia. The escalation in East Africa also caused Burundi and Rwanda to declare war against the DRC due to their close ties with Uganda. Meanwhile, Algerian troops in North Africa managed to reclaim the Ash Shati Region in Libya, while allied troops in the Sahel chose to only shell the borders of Algeria and Libya. The pressure on Morocco and Tunisia to join the allied war effort as major non-NATO allies grew with every day of fighting in North Africa, yet the fighting still remained in a standstill and Algeria pressured the Western Sahara to launch uprisings against Morocco. Soon, the UAE and Saudi Arabia sent troops to help fight with General Haftar and supported by Sudanese mercenaries. Soon, the first reports were being published about the Slavonic Corps being deployed to Libya and Somalia, leading to the first calls of the US and Haftar to send the mercenaries back, but were abruptly refused.

War of Cyberspace
While World War 3 kept raging on the physical battlefields all around the globe, the combat also reached a front that was yet untouched in the history of global war: Cyberspace. Both the Allies and Beijing Powers were engaging in cyber attacks against each other, but before that, this kind of digital warfare was seen as a way to prevent open hostilities before WW3, as seen during the Iran crisis of summer 2019, as well as the opening stages of the Sino -American conflict following the beginning of the Ukrainian War. Now that the war has raged for 3 years, both sides resorted to a more offensive use of cyber operations. While communication systems were constantly hacked and disabled, other aspects of the cyberspace were seen as suitable means of causing chaos and confusion, even at the home front. While communication systems were constantly hacked and disabled, while other aspects of cyberwarfare ere seen as suitable means of causing chaos and confusion, even at the home front. The disruption of GPS and other satellite systems on both sides resulted in increased rates of traffic jams and accidents, which lead to increased rates of traffic related deaths throughout the war in many countries, especially in the west. Countless online banking services, both on the civilian and state level, were hacked, leading to the disappearance of millions of dollars as well as tens of thousands of civilians not being able to access their online banking accounts anymore. Despite these fears, transatlantic under sea cables were not destroyed by the Russians and Chinese, since those saw their usage for disinformation campaigns and cyber operations as more valuable, which could be seen through the creation of countless fake social media accounts and the deliberate spread of fake news, conspiracy theories and propaganda which did resonate with a significant amount of people in western countries. Servers all over the globe were targets of massive hacking attack operations, leading to the collapse of countless websites and communication services, while power grids of both the Allies and Beijing Powers were also targeted in digital attacks. Russian and Chinese hackers managed to breach American cyber defense systems and caused several major power outages in North America. Entire cities along the East Coast of the continent suffered from almost complete blackouts including Washington DC, Richmond, New York City and Halifax in Canada. The power caused mass hysteria and mass panic and resulted in thousands of deaths for both Americans and Canadians, due to uncontrolled traffic and had an increase in traffic incidents and blackouts in hospitals. These cyber attacks also lead to looting and pillaging in several of the affected cities, causing additional mayhem and deaths in the process. But cities from the Revolutionist Powers also suffered cyber attacks in retaliation, causing the same problems in highly populated areas, like Shanghai, Beijing and even Moscow. While the chaos associated death toll remained rather low in Russia, a cyberattack against occupied Hong Kong caused China's grip over the city to loosen, leading to renewed protests and riots of Hong Kongers, who were met with brute force. Digital systems on the physical battlefield also came under several attacks through more hacking operations, leading to cyber strikes against missile defense systems for both factions. Whenever these cyber strikes were followed by physical attacks in order to exploit the weakness of the enemies defense, they proved to be very effective. Yet, cyberattacks on their own appeared to be almost useless in the actual combat, since both sides had enough competence in this field to counter many of these attacks. Cyber attacks were also used to disrupt politics in enemy countries. Especially in the west, Revolutionist Power hackers used viruses to steal and publish data that is sensitive on the devices of leading politicians. It resulted in deliberate whistleblowing and leaking, while the published information often resulted in protests and attacks against the diplomats in question, for example when hackers accessed the uncensored estimates of civilian casualties. In other cases hackers downloaded compromising material on the devices of various politicians, leading to investigations and a loss of public trust, despite the fact that in many cases these accusations were able tobe disproven.

Middle Eastern Front: The slaughter intensifies
At the Middle Eastern Front, the Beijing Powers kept struggling against the Allies. The final pockets of Hezbollah and Hamas fighters in Lebanon were finally wiped out, leaving Lebanon to be completely occupied by Israel and Allied reinforcements. Syria also faced turmoil as Assad's forces and Hezbollah fighters were cut off from Iranian reinforcements. This situation forced Syria to increase their use of chemical weapons and WMDs, especially during the Damascus Siege and the Battle of Deir ez-Zor, leading to a re-emerging chemical arms race between the Beijing Powers and the Allied Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia. During the entire conflict, both sides kept using and improving heir chemical weapon arsenal, and deployed them on several occasions. Which resulted in unprecedented human suffrage among the civilian population. Iraqi and Iranian troops resorted to chemical weapon use as well during the Battle of the Euphrates and the Battle of the Iraqi-Iranian border. With this kind of escalation, the war against humanity kept escalating as well. The chemical weapons were not used just for military reasons, but were rather used against specific civilians targets, like the few remaining Shia neighborhoods in Syria, as well as hotspots of the Shia community in Iraq. Both came under attack by Saudi Arabia, GCC forces and Sunni-backed militias, who committed countless atrocities against the civilian population, despite the UAE and Qatar showing hesitant action as they had concerns, but Saudi Arabia threatened to kick them out of the GCC if they refused to comply, while Christian and Jewish communities along the frontline were massacred by not only Saudi and Saudi-allied forces, but also Iranian backed militias. Both Saudi and Iranian forces began to deploy chemical weapons against each other to bog down their opponent's offensives, while Turkish forces fighting along the Euphrates River were taken by surprise by the gas attacks and were subsequently halted along the Euphrates. Forces from Turkmenistan reinforced the Iranian lines and were deployed toward Baghdad, and with remaining Iraqi, Iranian and Russian forces, launched several counteroffensives slowing down the Allied advance. At the same time, Iranian and Iraqi troops started to dig in close to the Iranian border and the Euphrates region, in order to slow down the allied approach. Iran also fortify, its entire southern and western border, in preparation for a possible allied invasion. With most of Iran's naval forces being destroyed. In Iran, the Mullah Regime conducted death rows executing Sunnis who were executed for acts of sabotage and spying on the Allies, while Shias who showed no loyalty or were suspected of being spies were executed publicly. While the offensives in Syria and Iraq were in full swing, the Yemen campaign was at a standstill. Even with extra forces from Turkey and Senegal, Saudi Arabia kept getting pushed back and was locked in a stalemate. They offered the small wealthy Gulf state of Qatar to rejoin the coalition, but was abruptly refused. Meanwhile the western Allies started to experiment with new weapons in the Middle East, including the first widespread usage of flamethrowers in decades. The flamethrowers were used as a way of dislodging Iranian and overall Islamist troops, who were usually ready to engage in suicidal attacks. The choice fell therefore on flamethrowers, due to the fact that these weapons had success against the Japanese in WW2, who were also willing to conduct suicidal attacks, but fled when confronted with fire. Both nations including Turkey engaged in talks pleading for Qatar to send whatever forces they still had and aid the Saudi campaign. Qatar refused to budge and would only comply on a list of strict demands, while Qatar had approved being a staging ground for an amphibious assault of Iran, while constructing FOBs for American forces. The US and other GCC members continued to plead with Qatar to send any remaining forces. Finally, Qatar obliged sending 2 mechanized infantry battalions and an artillery company joining Emirati forces on the island of Socotra. The US with fighter jets from the UAE destroyed ASM batteries on Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa while Iranian naval forces were pushed back hard and US Marines prepared for offensives on Qeshm Island and UAE forces prepared to retake Abu Musa, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb. Saudi forces, backed by Academi mercenaries and Mauritanian forces, launched several offensives into Houthi-occupied territory of Yemen, so the Allies had access to the Red Sea. With Emirati and Jordanian air support, the Saudi forces managed to reach the outskirts of Yemen but suffered tremendous losses during their offensives. The Houthi rebels inflicted sensitive casualties on the Saudi forces using Iranian-made missiles and various drone attacks that had previously struck Saudi oil fields in 2019 and 2020 which was used by Saudi Arabia as a justification for indiscriminate bombardment of Houthi-held areas, causing mass-casualties among the civilian population. Starvation and disease were spreading in the already war-torn country, causing protests in the West against Saudi Arabia's actions. In the Israeli-Palestinian front, the IDF offensives into Gaza Strip were bogged down due to armed resistance fighters of Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Jihad and lightly armed civilians which forced the Israeli troops to show more restraint in order to avoid unnecessary conflict with the Arab coalition and the western allies. The mixture of armed militias and civil opposition caused dozens of civilian casualties on a daily basis, while the Israeli air force conducted precision strikes against Hamas strongholds. The Palestinian uprisings in West Bank resulted in a heightened presence of Israeli forces, but IDF command avoided airstrikes in the theatre, to avoid striking their own settlements. Palestinian Jihadists continued with their balloon-bomb campaigns against Israel, which remained only symbolic in nature, since most of the bombs were shot down before reaching populated areas.

The Invasion of the North American Continent
After the Greenland campaign ended in a disaster, Russian command planned other offensives on places that would take the Allies by surprise and cause panic and confusion for Allied civilians and command. As early in the fall of 2025, Russian and Chinese marine forces launched simultaneous attacks on the US territory of the Aleutian Islands, Hawaii and Seattle, Washington State. Almost all of Americas naval assets were stationed in the southeastern Pacific, against China, meaning there was only very little maritime defenses around the first islands of the Aleutians. Russian submarines launched direct Kalibr-missile strikes against the US Radar station of Eareckson Air station on Shemya island, accompanied by aerial bombardment from a Tu-95 bomber squadron. The squadrons of attack aircraft and missile salvos were immediately detected by Cobra Dane Radar System, but due to a lack of defenses on Shemya island, the attack remained overall successful, leading to the destruction of Eareckson Air station. Russian naval vessels were pulled back to the Sea of Okhotsk and Kamchatka Peninsula preparing for operations against Japan, launched missile attacks against the mostly uninhabited Attu island in order to destroy potential runways for American planes or spy drones, while several Su-35 fighter and Tu-95 bombers started landing on the remote Alaskan island. Tanga Island also saw the landing of Russian forces, who started to create makeshift driveways for their aircraft. The Americans, who had to focus their remaining resources and assets in the Arctic in Alaska and the Bering Sea, increased their coastal defenses, but did not attempt to retake the uninhabited islands Russia was occupying. The invasion of the Aleutians still caused massive shock and outrage among the American people, while leading to enormous criticism of the oppositional Republicans, who were questioning Kamala perceived failures against this Russian aggression. These were exploited by Republicans as material for propaganda since they accused Kamala and the oppositional Democrats of plunging the US into humiliation, weakness and unnecessary fighting. He blamed the invasion on Kamala, whom he accused of weakening the US to such a point that this invasion was possible in the first place, while announcing emergency laws that increase her authority significantly. Despite the accusations on the Democrats, the Republicans also received allegations of full-on collaboration with Russia and China, the Republicans still secured the support of his base despite the ongoing Invasion of the Aleutians. The US forces in Alaska were put in a heightened state of alert, while the US air force monitored the Alaskan airspace, in order to prevent Russian attacks on mainland Alaska. Russia and China then attacked Oregon and California as a diversion attack against stationed US forces in Washington State, Idaho, Montana and other states. he Russian invasion forces in the same time tried to gain momentum, using their initial successes to take as many Aleutian Islands as possible, before facing significant resistance closer to Alaska. The US deployed several interceptor squadrons of bombers and jets itself, leading to the first aerial dogfights in American airspace in postmodern history. The Americans were able to inflict significant casualties to the Russians, but suffered losses themselves, and since most aircraft was deployed at the frontlines of the Eurasian continent, the US was forced to take a defensive position around the eastern Aleutians and the Alaskan peninsula in the south. Russian submarines managed to fire missile salvos against the biggest islands of the Aleutians, Umnak and Unalaska, leading to the first killed American civilians during warfare on US soil since WW2. Small numbers of American vessels were forced to protect mainland Alaska, while the Russian Aleutian campaign managed to seize control of Umank Island while MiG-29s, MiG-25s, Su-27s and Su-35s engaged American F-15s, F-16s, F-22s and F-35s in the aerial battles over Unalaska. Because of Russian and Chinese submarines, aircraft and surface vessels, in combination of the American defenses, Russia managed to land invasion forces on Unalaska as the last Aleutian island of the campaign. To save manpower, Mongolia offered to join the invasion force of North America, as it was one of the co-belligerent nations closer to the Arctic, to free soldiers who were deployed as part of an occupation force on the Aleutian Islands while a small number of Mongolian special forces and several T-72 tanks and Bm-21s were deployed as part of the Russian invasion force in Seattle. China also deployed several special forces to Alaska to assist the Russians, while using the campaign for propaganda purposes. Chinese forces launched several missiles against US base in Hawaii and followed with paratroopers landing on all parts of Hawaii, followed by an amphibious campaign in which US forces, which were severely outnumbered and brutally battered quickly fled for the mainland and Chinese marines and paratroopers successfully took Hawaii with tanks rolling through Honolulu signified that the Chinese successfully taken Hawaii. Chinese marines then landed in Oregon, Tacoma, Olympia and southern Washington State. The Chinese forces quickly seized the border between Oregon and Washington State to prevent any breakthroughs. Portland went under a heavy siege undergoing air and artillery bombardments from Chinese artillery and aircraft. US forces were battered and were forced to with draw. The Chinese marines began to storm into the city and were forced to put up with American guerilla fighters and stragglers lurking in Portland. The Chinese marines retaliated with massacres against civilians who surrendered to Chinese forces. Their bodies would be beaten by rifle stocks, rolled over by tanks and sent into buildings and burned alive. When first reports of the massacres were published in full view, China denied all allegations of massacres. Russian marines landed in Northern California after several bombing raids and quickly seized the border of Oregon with the intent to meet up with the Chinese in Oregon and other Russian and Mongolian forces in Seattle, and launch attacks on mainland America and force Kamala to divert more battlegroups from Europe and give Putin and the CSTO a chance for more grabs in Europe. However, the landings in California stagnated as the US forces had prepared and had armed civilians against the Russian forces. The Russian forces in California were forced to dig in as US forces began building up for several offensives to drive the Russian forces out of California, while the Russians on the other hand, lost most of their infantry in major offensives as their forces were subdued by air raids and armed civilians and were tied down along the coast. The USAF began to bomb the Russian-held city of Eureka to weaken defenses and allow for US forces to launch a counteroffensive. Remaining Canadian forces were sent to reinforce US forces outside of Tacoma and Seattle and launched counterattacks pushing back Russian forces. The Russians and Chinese realized that Canada was also blocking their path for dominance in North America, and Putin and Xi Jinping drew up plans for an invasion of Canada. Russian marines landed on the shores of British Columbia while Chinese forces stormed Vancouver Island securing a beachhead against Canadian forces. The main Russian marine force landed in Texada Island, Sechelt, Bowen Island, Gambier Island, Anvil Island and Vancouver. The Canadian forces, despite being outnumbered, held a fierce resistance against the Russian marines and managed to inflict severe casualties before being forced to withdraw under heavy aerial and artillery bombardment from the Udaloy II and Sovremeney destroyers assisting the marine force. Allied propaganda then compared it with the 900 Canadian peacekeepers against the Croatians that outnumbered them during Operation Medak Pocket. Moving along the Fraser River, Russian forces accompanied by VDV units stormed Surrey and moved their Udaloy II destroyers up the river to assist in the storming. The Canadians this time retreated despite their fierce resistance. The Russian, Chinese and Mongolian forces could no longer advance due to the bad weather and that they had depleted their ammo stocks dry after intense firefights with American and Canadian forces, and the frontline went silent.

South Africa joins the fray: Fighting breaks out in Southern and Western Africa
With a new year approaching, the combat in Africa continued to spread to the south and west. Because of the presence of the Russian PMCs, Slavonic Corps and Wager Group and Chinese PMCs approaching influence inside its borders, several African countries were forced to join. The Central African Republic was forcefully dragged into the conflict and join the Revolutionist Powers, and deployed forces to fight in South Sudan. For similar reasons, Angola, Madagascar, Mozambique and Zambia declared their support for China's cause. Hence, why forces from Zimbabwe were able to move forces through Zambia and Angola to reinforce the DR Congo. On their way, forces from Zambia and Zimbabwe were violated the Namibian border, causing a heightened state of alert in southern Africa. With Colognes, Central African and Sudanese forces now closing on the South Sudanese capital, Juba, while committing various atrocities against the South Sudanese people, South Africa, which engaged in the past in a peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, decided to once again provide military assistance to the south Sudanese, hoping to be able to stop the escalation. This increased the severe tension and increased the chance of South African forces engaging their Mozambique and Zimbabwean counterparts fighting in the DRC and Sudan against South Sudan. South African troops were sent through Mozambique and Tanzania towards allied nations close to the central African front, while sending a smaller battalion to Namibia and Botswana, in order to reassure their neighbors of its support in the case of escalation and full-on combat would ensue in the south. Sure enough, the fighting finally broke out and South African and Namibian forces launched several offensives in southern Angola, but South African and Botswanan forces were already tied up with the Zimbabwean and Zambian forces as their army was supported by Mozambique. Angolan forces were immediately dispatched to the south to keep the Cubango River safe. Angola requested for the paramilitary group, the Slavonic Corps to be deployed against the South African and Namibian forces. Mozambique forced South Africa to withdraw from Botswana and deployed forces to the border as a gesture of intimidation, while the Russian PMC, Wagner Group conducted various acts of espionage and sabotage in South Africa and Allied countries in Africa. Among those were South African forces crossing Tanzania and Mozambique, causing outrage among the South African leadership. Those attacks on the other hand were blamed on Islamists in Mozambique by the Russians, because they tried to avoid direct confrontation with South Africa. As a result, a smaller contingent of South Africa's troops was ordered to remain in the North of Mozambique, in order to tackle potential „terrorist attacks“ against their forces marching through. Mozambique, which only agreed on allowing troops to travel through its territory to reach the allied battlefields further north, protested against the non-temporary presence of South African troops, and mobilized its forces as a gesture of intimidation. In order to avoid the economically and military strong BRICS nation of South Africa to engage more against revisionist African nations on other battlefields, the paramilitary Wagner group conducted a false flag assault against South African troops, causing fighting with forces from Mozambique. As a result of this, South Africa was allowed to combat their Mozambique counterparts, and resulted in Mozambique declaring war on South Africa. At the same time, South African and Botswanan forces were engaged with Zambian and Zimbabwean forces violating Botswanan territory. It resulted in Angola, Zimbabwe, but also Zambia to declare war on South Africa. In West Africa, the tension remained at a boiling point in various countries like Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone and Benin. Due to Biden's retreats years before the conflict, Burkina Faso was left with a lack of support against insurgencies in its territory, and lead to the increasing frustration about the west's lack of support for African countries. Russia and China exploited this with increasing their ties to Burkina Faso, in order to buff the overtaxed armed forces against the Islamist terrorists, binding the country closer to Russia and China. The increased dependency on not only Russia, but also China allowed the Revisionist Powers to pressure several western African nations to support their war effort against the Allies. Burkina Faso forces captured French forces inside it's territory, and these French forces were under equipped to deal with the Burkina Faso forces, while Ghana, Guinea and Sierra Leone were pressured into attacking Mali, a Sahel nation that hosted British, French, US, German and even Belgian troops, in order to put pressure on the Allies. Senegal was threatened as it hosted French forces. The forces of Sierra Leone, Guinea, Ghana and Burkina Faso were aided by unknown Chinese PMCs that had been deployed. Investigations revealed that the Chinese PMCs would be used as ways to spread China's influence more rapidly across Africa. Benin, who had been dependent on Russian aid, joined the Sahel campaign of the Revolutionist Powers, while allowing for Chinese PMCs to aid them and hoped for economic benefits at the end of the conflict.

Asian Front: China's Conundrum
At the Asian front, China's advance lasted for 4 years and its spearhead of advance finally bended in 2025. Little progression was achieved in Korea, while the Indian front remained in a deadlock, while movement was noticeable on the Southeastern front, as it saw constant movement from both factions. Years of US air raids and Allied blockades on China began to tank on it's economy, and the PLA was confronted with fuel shortages and a shortage on ammo stocks. Russia and other Revolutionist Power members tried to help China compensate for the ammo losses. Because of China's tanking economy, led to a new wave of increased uprisings emerging in Tibet and Xinjiang, diplomatically and militarily supplied by the Allies, rebels in Tibet and Xinjiang gained small arm weapons against Chinese forces. These insurgencies diverted China's attention more to the inside, leading to bloody countermeasures in both regions. Especially Xinjiang saw a new dimension of violence against inner Chinese citizens, in form of several massacres against areas of the Muslim Uyghur minorities. Thousands of Uyghurs were rounded up and brought into China's „re-education“ camps, which became de facto concentration camps for Muslims and other individuals the regime saw as undesirable. At the same time, casualty rates at the Korean Front mounted rapidly, due to the large armies that were concentrated in comparatively small terrain. Seoul gained the name of being a „meat grinder“, because both sides concentrated large masses of forces in and around the city, leading to unforeseen carnage. North Korean troops, which were facing massive material damage due to their outdated equipment, were forced into the defense in various sectors of the front, forcing the Chinese and Russians to relieve pressure on their reluctant allies, by increasing their attacks on Cheongju and Andong. The Mongolian forces were already at a decrease of manpower, as 15,000 were sent for Europe, 5,000 for the US and the remaining 10,000 were stuck in Korea and were reluctantly drafted by Russia and China on most fronts during the conflict, and used as additional cannon fodder to slow down Allied soldiers in Korea. Meanwhile, the Allied forces managed to inflict the most damage on the Beijing Powers after the Battle of the East Japan Sea and rendered the North Korean Navy useless, and left the Chinese and Russian Navies in retreat and fight off Allied vessels along the North Korean coastline. Long range missile attacks against Japan and pacific American territories became less frequently, due to shortages in China's arsenal. Russian anti-air defenses were able to keep the allied air force at bay, but the additional fronts that were opened by Russia in the Arctic forced the missile and air defense forces to increasingly focus on the protection of Russia's coastline. This created enough openings for the allied air force to harass the revisionist lines in Korea, leading to heavy casualties among the North Koreans. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un faced not only immense pressure on his troops coming from the Allies, but also the Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin demanding Kim to hold the line no matter what, while the North Korean population suffered from mass starvation and disease. In a desperate act, Kim Jong Un authorized for chemical weapons of mass destruction to be deployed causing suffering among civilians and soldiers alike. Meanwhile, Chinese troops in Southeast Asia were bogged down in costly jungle warfare with the Allies, who were able to prevent a Chinese breakthrough during the Battle of Hanoi. Allied troops from Thailand, Vietnam and the US almost completely overrun Cambodia, while cutting it off from Laos. Simultaneously, allied air, missile and long range artillery attacks against Hainan became more frequent, causing additional upheaval and protests in China. Due to the war entrance of Vietnam and Thailand, China had to pull back its „9-Dash line“ further away from the continental Asian coastline, which threatened to create an opening between the Spratly and Paracel islands. With the combined effort of Malay, Singaporean, Vietnamese, Indonesian, American, Brunei, Thai and ASEAN and Indian naval forces, the Allied forces exploited the Chinese conundrum in rapidly seizing the Royal Charlotte Reef and the Ardasier Reefs. The PLA Navy suffered immense casualties during the Battle of Rifleman Bank. In return, Xi Jinping ordered Vice Admiral Shen Jinlong to increase mining in the South China Sea and General Zhang Youxia to add aditional fortifications to the Parcel Islands. The conquered islands in the South China Sea then were repurposed by the Allies, who deployed their own anti-air and anti-ship defenses on these islands, which increased their range significantly. Among these new systems were US Strategic Long Range Cannons (SLRC), which were able to deliver massed fires at a strategic range of up to 1852 km (1000 miles). These cannons, which were firstly introduced in 2023, proved to be effective against revisionist A2/AD capabilities and enabled allied air forces to penetrate deeper into enemy airspace, and were therefore also deployed in Korea, where they were used against Russian S-300, S-400 and S-500 units. The US also added additional GLMRS launchers with an extended range into their arsenal, leading more and more Beijing targets in North Korea, occupied Taiwan and coastal China to come into the range of allied fire. South Korea then faced one of the worst humanitarian disasters in history, as thousands of refugees were fleeing the bloodshed in the North of the country, but due to the geographical limits of the Peninsula, the gigantic armies assembled in Korea, and the range of both sides weaponry, tens of thousands of civilians fell victim to the fighting, despite trying to escape and some of which were involved in accidental fire incidents.

War of the Agents
Since both the Allied Powers and the Revolutionist Powers were entangled in combat on the battlefields, both sides also heavily intensified their intelligence operations, leading to what was later called the “Agents-“, or „War of the Agents“. Spies and sleeper agents were used on all fronts in order to gain intelligence, sabotage the enemy or even actively assassinate specific targets. Especially the US, Russia and China deployed thousands of agents all over the world, who waged a covertly war against their respective counterparts. In Europe and Americas, Russian dissidents and deserters were attacked, even when they were far from the frontlines, and lead to some dissidents being shot by Russian agents in broad daylight, or assassinated with the use of nerve agents, and resulted in hysteria, panic and chaos in Europes large cities about the usage of chemical weapons. In the US and Russia, sleeper agents sabotaged Communication infrastructure and spread misinformation on a large scale, including the publication of explicit material from the battlefield, which accused the opposing side of war crimes. Allied and Revolutionist agents also targeted their enemies' power grid, in form of several hacking and even bombing operations against power lines and plants, while several high ranking politicians were killed by car bombs and snipers. Especially car bombing attacks became so frequent in the streets of Washington DC, Beijing and Moscow, that they themselves resembled the battlefields. These attacks not only disrupted the enemies' leadership, but also increased panic and hysteria among the population of both the Allies and Beijing Powers, leading a feeling of general suspicion to spread among the people. Russian and Chinese security forces and military police raided offices and private homes on a daily basis, arresting hundreds of suspects, even though many of them were wrongly accused and only arrested for either family or friendly connections to other countries. In the United States, state surveillance was heavily increased in order to find and identify Chinese and Russian agents while many foreign press members and members of foreign organizations were expelled from the country. The „War of the Agents“ also caused massive paranoia among the leaders of the Allies and Revolutionist Powers. Chinese leader Xi Jinping ordered the execution of members of his cabinet who became increasingly and openly wary of the war, accusing them to be traitors supporting the US and its allies, while Kamala Harris developed paranoias of being poisoned, assassinated and drugged, leading her overall demeanor to become more aggressive and fragile. Wiretapping and undercover surveillance also became much more common, that is why Russian audio of several politicians discussing their military strategy was leaked, as were conversations among the American leadership. Many whistleblowers, not all of them acting under Revolutionist's orders, were brought in front of war tribunals, and charged with treason, despite many of them just trying to reveal allied misconduct on various battlefields. During this time period, Kamala ordered two thousand American soldiers to be pulled out of Europe, in order to fight against China and prepare for the invasion of Iran, causing massive outrage among the Europeans. A lot of Kamala critics went to the streets over this, leading to clashes between protesters and security forces, while almost the entire Democratic leadership openly questioned Kamala's strategy and lack of allied commitment. House Republican and Republican senators tried to hinder Kamala's decision to pull troops out of Europe, which failed due to Kamala's executive orders, the emergency laws still being in place and the unconditional backing Kamla enjoyed through her loyalist Senate majority. The attempt of sabotaging Kamala decision making lead the president to order the arrest of several public Republican figures, accusing them of treason as well. All three of them were released after a week, but this action still intensified the tension inside Americas society. During exactly these tensions, the US and the allied leadership in Europe were rocked by one of the largest scandals in political history. A whistleblower, who was incredibly critical of Kamala's decisions and who witnessed his strategy behind them, created a secret footage with audio, which showed a conversation between Kamala and some of his political advisers. In this footage, despite lacking quality, Kamala can clearly be seen an heard speaking about the situation at the Western Front. When her advisers stressed that the US needs to support their allies in Europe against Russia, Kamla repeatedly asked why, and added that it would be Europe's own fault that it was performing so poorly against the Beijing Powers. She called the Europeans lousy and unprepared, and asked her advisers why he should support those „ungrateful“ Europeans, when she needs her soldiers against China. After the notion of the attending people, that the Europeans would need the US, or otherwise Russia would conquer the continent, Kamala openly said that he would rather want to negotiate with Russia, instead of having to deal with all of these bad and ungrateful allies. This conversation was leaked days after, causing the whistleblower to be hunted down and charged with treason in a speeded up process. The uproar caused by this revelation shook not only America, but also Europe, which felt betrayed by the US president. Canada joined Europe in the condemnation of this reveal, while American military leaders tried their best to limit the damage of this scandal, claiming that the US would still fully support its allies. Despite these attempts of trying to ease the increasing and ongoing tension, European leaders and political figures, especially those who worked their way up during the war, came together in order to discuss their next moves. The younger representatives and military leaders, who were drafted during WW3 convinced their older colleagues, that the US would not come to Europe's rescue, and that it effectively abandoned its allies. Out of this dynamic, several politicians, military leaders and diplomats created a series of European only initiatives, aimed at reorganizing Europe's militaries and its strategy, despite American protest. The US was now increasingly left in the dark about European decision making, while the European command was restructured independently from the US, despite skeptical voices from various European nations, like the UK. After looking through declassified files after the conflict, it turned out the audio was a whole fake and was put together by Chinese personnel to make Europe abandon the US during the conflict.

The Latin American War: Venezuela joins the Revolutionist Powers
At the same time on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Venezuela led by Nicolas Maduro began to suffer an extensive crisis. Because of ongoing blockades led by the United States and other allied countries against Venezuela's longtime Revolutionist sponsors, China and Russia, Venezuela came to the brink of collapse. Riots and protests became more frequent, while increased super-inflation and overall dire economic situation caused increased famine and disease in the south American country. The regime blamed the US and it's allies for the increased and ongoing blockade, and increased it's anti-American rhetoric massively, while a large portion of the Venezuelan people joined in on this animosity. While the majority of the Venezuelan Army remained loyal towards Maduro, while rebelling armed forces lacked significance, due to the missing foreign support after WW3 broke out. While the regime was put into question, Maduro and his partners looked for ways to relieve pressure on Venezuela, while also hurting those he deemed responsible for the crisis, which was why he decided to take offensive action against the Allies. Maduro agreed on harassing ship routes and maritime traffic, in the style Iran had done in the Persian Gulf in 2019 and onwards, that is why Venezuela's only 2 submarines went on a hunting mission in the coastal waters of the Southern Caribbean Sea, attacking and harassing shipping lines of US ally Colombia and allied Caribbean territories, like Curaçao and Aruba. While these attacks were only minor, it worried Allied leadership of a potential theatre being opened in the war, especially since Russian ships, aircraft and ground soldiers were present in the South American country. These forces were accompanied by Tupolev 160 bomber squadrons that were deployed in the early stages of the conflict, were activated by the Kremlin in the wake of NATO's counterattacks and counter offensives in the European Front, leading to the Tu-160s to perform bombing raids over Allied territories in the Caribbean Islands and lead to Curaçao, Aruba, Montserrat and Trinidad and Tobago to be attacked. Because of most American naval assets in the Pacific Ocean, the United States lacked a significant maritime presence in the Caribbean, and without an aircraft carrier at America's southern coastline. This was heavily exploited by the Russian and Venezuelan air forces, causing freight ships and oil rigs in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico to be harassed as well. The attacks against oil platforms lead to devastating ecological consequences, due to millions of barrels of oil that leaked into the Ocean, while also hurting the allied fuel supply. The anti-Maduro Group or most commonly referred to as the Rio Pact, condemned Venezuela's aggressive stance, while the other South American countries remained hesitant to call out Russia for it's actions, due to some countries having a strong relationship with Russia. The only South American countries that voiced their support for Venezuela were Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, Uruguay, Honduras, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St Kitts and Nevis. In order to prevent any further escalation, France, Netherlands and the UK dispatched several warships for their overseas territory in the Caribbean and that their territories had a form of protection. Politicians in the US also called for a naval presence to secure Americas southern flank, while also calling for attacks against the Russian aircraft in Venezuela. This debate was accompanied by several south American initiatives, like Colombia mobilizing its army along its border with Venezuela, while hunting its few submarines. Wary of a potential strike of the US, Russia and Venezuelan dictator Maduro tried to circumvent this scenario, by once again taking offensive action. Because of their support against the rebels in the failed Guaido Coup in 2019, St Vincent and the Grenadines and St Kitts and Nevis allowed for Russian and Venezuelan forces to use their territory as forward bases. The support of Saint Vincent was more reluctantly though, because it feared a possibly violent invasion of Russian and Venezuelan forces, due to Venezuela's claim on Bird Island. This presence was enhanced by Udaloy II destroyers and an Iranian ship that was deployed to Venezuela when the stages of the conflict was building up in 2021. Especially the helicopter flattops were used by the Venezuelans and Russians to pursue a piracy campaign in the Caribbean Sea, leading commercial vessels to be assaulted and captured with the help of helicopters, similar to how Iran captured various oil tankers during the „Tanker-War“ of 2019. US planes taking off from Puerto Rico managed to sink a Venezuelan ship, while conducting air strikes against Beijing forces stationed on smaller Caribbean islands. This led to Russian and Venezuelan forces to attack and occupy the ABC Islands, while Maduro declared war on US. Maduro then declared war on Colombia, a US ally and it declared its support for the United States. Meanwhile, Brazil was beginning mobilization its troops along its border with Venezuela, for the case of open hostilities.

Caribbean Conflict: Cuba declares war
While the Allies made progress in the Middle East and Europe, hostilities in South America kept escalating. The ABC Islands and some of the Small Antilles were still under some form Venezuelan occupation, supported by Russian forces and Bolivarian sympathizers in the Caribbean, while the Allies still lacked a larger naval presence in the Caribbean Sea. As a reaction to Venezuela's hostilities, Colombia tried to increase it's military presence and increase pressure on Venezuela by imposing a total naval blockade of any goods going to Venezuela specifically In order to demonstrate America's resolve, the US publicly sunk cargo-ships that were destined for Venezuela, after allowing the crews to leave the vessels. Among those were dominantly Cuban vessels, since Cuba was Venezuela's biggest regional supporter. As a consequence of this, Cuba had suffered heavily throughout the Allied naval blockades itself, declared war on the United States, while 3 days later, as a display of support for its allies, Nicaragua and Honduras declared war on the United States. After publicly joining forces, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras and Venezuela searched for a potential retaliation against the US, leading them to decide for operations against US and allied territory, which could be exploited by Beijing's propaganda. Cuban forces attacked the US Naval base in Guantanamo and invaded Haiti as a staging ground for offensives against the US-territory of Puerto Rico and Bahamas Venezuelan and Russian aircraft already had conducted air raids on Puerto Rico from St Vincent and the Grenadines and St Kitts and Nevis as launch platforms. This forced the scarce naval force of the US to divert its attention from the southern Caribbean Sea to Puerto Rico, leaving only a minimum of defenses in the Straits of Florida. With America being distracted by attacks on Puerto Rico and the American Virgin Islands, the Beijing Powers saw themselves to launch a risky, yet ideological endeavor: Continuing the invasion of the US mainland. Since two thirds of the US continental air force has been called mostly to the Asian Front, and another large portion being tied down in Alaska, the remainder of the US only had a bare minimum aerial defenses, encouraging Cuban, Venezuelan and Russian forces to attempt an assault on southern Florida. At 5:30am on July 4th, 2026, the air forces of Russia, Venezuela and Cuba entered US airspace, and conducted a series of missile strikes and bombing attacks against US territory, starting with Key West. Among the first targets being hit by the Beijing Powers was the Naval Air Station Key West, after which the rest of the Florida Keys were targeted. Despite some minor damage, most of the Florida Keys remained unharmed since Russia, Cuba and Venezuela tried to reach and focus on Miami. The US air force mobilized every aircraft available at the Homestead Air Reseve Base, leading to the first ever dogfights occurring in mainland American territory. The Beijing attackers were able to hit and damage several buildings in Miami, causing chaos and panic among the civilian population, that has initially gathered to celebrate the American Independence Day. At Nightfall, the US air force managed to destroy all invading aircraft, some of which crashed into the Everglades and caused fires in the swamps, while at the end of the day 150 Americans were killed during what was later nicknamed „the Florida Blitz“. Kamala Harris and other Democrat members tried to proclaim the kill rate of the US air force as a tremendous success, despite the oppositional Republican and Kamala critics all over the US seeing this as an embarrassment and humiliation for America, which lead to a new wave of anti-Democrat protests in various US states. Cuba and Venezuela, despite losing their entire attack force during this day celebrated the attack as prove of American weakness, while Beijing Powers all over the globe exploited the Florida Blitz for their own propaganda. Venezuela also planned another hit against the American supply of resources, this time by targeting oil drilling facilities of US companies in Guyana, with which Venezuela was engaged in a century long border dispute. Venezuelan forces, supported by helicopters, attacked EXXON oil facilities in the disputed region of Guyana Esequiba, leading dozens of Americans to be captured. At the same time, Suriname became threatened of Venezuelan forces on the border of Guyana and Suriname and had been attempting to keep a neutral stance. ll of these actions of war finally convinced US ally Colombia to actively fight against the south American Revisionist Powers, that is why Colombian troops, supported by a small, already present American contingency, attacked Venezuelan forces guarding the border between Venezuela and Colombia. The leadership of Colombia alongside US officials, called for military support from the already activated Rio-Pact, leading the governments of most south American nations to evaluate a possible entrance into the war. Venezuelan ally Bolivia on the other hand called for a ceasefire and threatened that a US invasion of Venezuela would also mean war with Bolivia. While the first hostilities started along the Colombian-Venezuelan border, Cuban forces assaulted the US base of Guantanamo. Due to their numerical advantage, the Cuban army was able to overwhelm the small US presence of Guantanamo after a week of brutal fighting, which lead to the liberation of Guantanamo's inmates. The liberation of the prisoners of Guantanamo, among them many once internationally warranted terrorists and criminals, was celebrated not only by the Cuban regime, but also Beijing propaganda channels all over the world, with some even comparing this event with the liberation of concentration camp prisoners during WW2.

Operation "Wrath of the Spear": NATO strikes back
In the weeks and months after the „Bombshell-Leaks", the UK had to convince most of Europe that America was still with Europe in the fight against Russia, the allies of Europe, despite the reluctance of some members, co-signed the „United Forces of Europe Act“, an initiative that strengthened the military ties of European countries fighting against Russia, but had distanced themselves from the US due to some leaders believing in the fake audio recording. The Allies decided that they have to attempt a large scale breakthrough, in order to collapse the overstretched Russian frontlines. That is why they started with Operation „Wrath of the Spear“, a plan which intended to create the biggest coordinated land offensive in history. As preparations, the US lended them airships to be used as High Altitude Platforms (HAP), as which they operated in altitudes close to the stratosphere, where they launched anti-satellite missiles and stratospheric drones. Since those airships were less suspicious than ground launched missiles, their deployment was often ignored or even undetected by Russian radar systems, leading to the loss of several surveillance satellites. On the ground, the Allies used a multitude of covert ways to mobilize and position the hundreds of thousands of fresh conscripts, which were readied for service over the last years and months, leading to nighttime movements, the usage of civilian and even decoy vehicles. Coordination efforts became harsh as logistics became a challenge, but due to diversion attacks at the Finnish front, closer to St. Petersburg, as well as the Ukrainian front, the Allies were able to distract the Russians long enough for them to ready their troops and deploy their new weapons. By using civilian trucks and mini vans disguised as humanitarian aid vehicles with medical aid, the Allies managed to deploy hundreds of new artillery systems, improved tanks and munitions. This strategy would later on lead the CSTO forces to actively target humanitarian forces, out of fear that they would secretly transport allied weapons. Many of the newly designed aircraft were not operational though, and remained therefore hidden at allied storage facilities. Despite some problems occurring in the coordination and preparation of Operation „Wrath of the Spear“, the Allies finally decided to launch their offensive after weeks of preparation. At 03:00 am at night, the Allies attacked simultaneously at the entire front, stretching from the Finmark in the North, all the way down to the Black Sea. The surprise offensive by NATO caught the Russian and CSTO forces off guard with a preemptive bombardment by German PzH 2000s shelling the frontline. The new long range artillery systems, many of which were of primarily German design, shelled the frontline relentlessly, using a wide array of projectiles, ranging from rocket assisted, to smoke and even EMP shells, the latter being designed and provided by the US before the scandal. The artillery bombardment, that was directed with the help of aerostat drones, was also targeted against Russian anti-air defenses, like the S-400 and S-500, leading to heavy losses for the CSTO forces. Due to many S-400s and 300s being hit by long range artillery fire, the allied air force was finally able to penetrate deeper into enemy airspace, delivering bombs and missiles to the CSTO rear. The simultaneous attacks along the entire frontline, supported by Allied vessels in the Barents, Baltic and Black Sea, overwhelmed the Russian, Belarusian, Kazakh, Kyrgyzstani, Uzbek and Tajikistani forces, due to overstretched supply lines and the additional fronts that pinned down Russian troops. Russia, after all these years of fighting, also lacked the resources to provide all fronts with the capacities needed to counter the offensive effectively. Despite high NATO casualties, the combined European and US forces broke through the CSTO lines in multiple sectors at once, forcing the CSTO forces to take up new defensive positions in Norway, Moldova and Ukraine, but were abandoned after a couple of days, in order to strengthen the defenses in Ukraine. Overall, Operation „Wrath of the Spear“ was seen as the biggest success of the Allies so far, and an embarrassment for the Russian autocrat Putin. The Russians also engaged in fierce fighting in the Odessa Oblast, but due to the numerical superiority of the Allies, as well as the combined effort of air, naval and artillery forces, the pocket of revisionist resistance in the Oblast was soon encircled and cut off from the rest of Ukraine, leading to heavy casualties and the capture of hundreds of Russian soldiers. Putin ordered that the main focus of the Russian counter-operations should be put on the Polish section of the front, as well as the Baltic coastline and southern Finland, in order to avoid St. Petersburg being threatened. The US tried to convince the Europeans that the scandal was a complete lie and that they would contribute to the NATO counteroffensive, to which, some European countries obliged and began coordination with US forces, despite many US forces being exposed to Russian fire because of a lack of coordination and communication. In protest of this, Austria and Switzerland, which were badly butchered in the Russian shock campaign in the years prior to the offensive and were threatened by the CSTO possibly invading them, joined the conflict and demanded that Europe to accept America's redemption after the scandal was leaked or else, all US weapon sales would be stopped, all US forces would withdraw from Europe and leave the EU to defend itself. Europe obliged and allowed for Swiss and Austrian forces to join in the offensive. Despite the US stopping some weapon deliveries to Europe because of this, the Americans reluctantly followed through with the new approach of the Europeans, since the US could not afford Russia to succeed at the Western Front, since Russia would then focus on the Eastern and Northern Front against the US. Several European nations gained new commanding powers in what was now dubbed the „Alliance of the United Forces“ (AUF), leading the UK to get the main command over the European navy, France getting the main command over the army, while Germany took over sub-commands like the allied tank and submarine forces, as well as many logistical and supervisory commands. The European air-command, and the nuclear deterrence was equally distributed between Britain and France, while Germany also retained a lot of influence in the air command. Many of the southern European allies, as well as the neutral NATO member Hungary felt left out the distribution of influence, despite Italy and Spain being core members of the reorganized AUF naval and air corps. The new structure still had immense flaws, that often slowed down the European offensive, but the initial gains lifted the spirits of the war torn continent, and energized especially the younger recruits who were firstly drafted during this war. Due to the constant demolition of Russian anti-air defenses, the successes on the ground were accompanied by fierce dogfights in the sky, as well as waves of allied bombardment raids against the CSTO lines. This new situation lead the Chinese to dispatch some 2 thousand soldiers to the western front, in order to relieve pressure off their most important ally in the war. US forces, now coordinating with their European allies again, began drawing up plans for attacks on Kaliningrad and Crimea with Turkish, Bulgarian, Italian and Spanish forces launching an amphibious assault on the city of Sevastopol while Polish and other NATO forces would assault Kaliningrad. The AUF granted America command over the direction of battlegroups and on how they attack. American generals then diverted battlegroups into attacks that forced the Russians back from their previous strongholds.

Balkan Breakthrough: NATO advances through Serbia
With the CSTO in retreat and Europe regaining lost ground, the US facing an invasion of its Far East territories, and the Eastern Front seeing a slowdown of Chinese progress, Europe still struggled to break the stalemate at the Western Front. While the deadlock along the Western Front seemed to be ironclad, the war at the Balkan Front saw far more movement. Despite victories in Kosovo and Bosnia Herzegovina, Revolutionist Powers Serbia faced severe problems due to being almost completely surrounded by enemies. The Allies finally managed to consolidate enough forces around Serbia to attempt breaking through the enemies lines. While Croatian troops, supported by the Slovenians, were already invading and occupying several border towns in Serbia, Serbia itself launched an invasion of Croatia, leading to heavy fighting in the region of Vukovar. The Albanians, Kosovars, Greeks and Montenegrins pushed back against the Serbs in Istok and Gjilan, while a Montenegrin attempt of crossing into Serbia through the Serbian-Montenegrin border failed. While Romania, supported by French, British, Slovakians and to a smaller extent Germans, managed to perform a successful invasion of Serbia along their entire shared border, despite missile attacks launched by the Russian Black Sea Fleet, leading Baćka Topola to be captured by the Allies. At the same time, allied aircraft intensified their bombing campaign of Belgrade and important Serbian infrastructure, leading to heavy casualties not only among the Serbian armed forces, but also the civilian population of Serbia, causing outcries in both Beijing and Allied countries. Meanwhile, the Allies of Europe increasingly banded together for the development of new weapons and other systems. One of the main focuses was additional and improved fire power, which was heavily needed in order to destroy Russian anti-air defenses, while smashing through their own fortifications. Additionally, the Allies tried to develop ways of countering Russian satellites, which gave the revisionists advantages in monitoring allied operations and movements. There were also projects for 6th Generation fighter and bomber aircraft, which also saw support from the United States as well. Especially Germany became increasingly dominant in the development of new weapons, leading to the production of various new artillery systems, improved tanks, rifles, aircraft and even submarines. Meanwhile, after intense diplomatic effort, Italy declared its support for the Balkan campaign, leading Italian troops to be landed in Albania and Bosnia, where they engaged against Serbian troops and their allied militias in ethnic Serbian territory. Allied surface vessels in the Adriatic conducted several missile strikes against Serbia and Republika Srpska, causing a Serbian setback in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Main targets of the allied missile attacks were Serbian ammunition depots and radar stations, while the air force conducted waves of air raids against Serbian supply routes and artillery positions. Bulgaria still remained neutral, but increased its defenses along its border with Serbia, in the case of a potential attack. It also granted the Allies logistical support, as did Hungary, but this was not enough to stop allied frustration with those uncommitted NATO members, leading joined allied military funding in Bulgaria and Hungary to be partially frozen. As a result, Hungary mobilized a large portion of its army as a show of support, but while Hungarian volunteers went to Poland to support the Allies, the mobilized Hungarian forces themselves seemed to be geared more against Romania and Ukraine, instead of Russian forces in the region, which increased tensions between those nations. Due to the ongoing struggle on the continent, the Europeans made a request to Washington, asking the US to send more troops to the Western Front, which was denied. The official explanation for that was, that the US would lack enough troops to follow that request, but at the same time, thousands of newly drafted and trained US soldiers were sent to the Eastern Front, in order to force a victory against China. What made things worse were public comments of Kamala Harris, who claimed that the Europeans would been able to defeat the Russians, if they would have spent more on defense before the war, as the US demanded. Kamala also publicly stated, that the Europeans would perform very badly, and that they should seek peace with Russia. These comments were met with harsh criticism throughout Europe, while there were also loud critical voices in the US condemning Kamala's statements. Almost simultaneously, 2000 more US soldiers were ordered to be sent to Europe. Especially Poland, which was very in an armed struggle to push the Russians out of the war, felt betrayed by this move, and moved closer to its European allies for joined defense plans and weapon programs. Russian missile strikes on the other hand got less frequently, because Russia wanted to prevent missile shortages. These remaining strikes were still able to destroy a lot of allied highways, runways, roads, airfields and railways though, affecting central and northern Europe the most, due to eastern Europe largely being occupied by Russia. As compensation for the destroyed infrastructure, the Allies of Europe came up with new, innovative ways of transporting soldiers, supplies and equipment, that is why they introduced a new class of large airships, as a way of not having to rely on airfields and railroads. At the same time, Serbian forces started to dig in and fortified their positions, creating several lines of defense against the invading troops in the north and northeast, by taking position along the Sava and Danube rivers. This on the other hand meant, that Serbia had to effectively abandon Vojvodina as a whole, in order to assure Belgrade's security. traditionally pro-Russian state, and newest NATO member North Macedonia remained rather passive, but tried to move the Allies towards a rather Beijing leaning peace diplomatically, since close ties between Russia and the Balkan nation remained present throughout the war. North Macedonia still mobilized parts of its army for the case that conflict would spread, but instead of mobilizing towards the Serbian border, most of the troops activated this way were sent much closer to Greece, Kosovo and Albania, causing tensions with allied nations. Despite these frictions with local Balkan players, the NATO campaign against Serbia seemed to be more successful than the ones against Russia, which saw nothing but the devastation of large parts of northern and eastern Europe. Many nations in the world eyed on Europe, asking themselves if the fate of the Allies may be determined by victory or failure of the Europeans against Russia and its Beijing allies.

Middle Eastern Front: Night of the Jewish Slaughter and Kurdish Genocide
The conflict in the Middle East showed no signs of regards for human life, especially for the civilian population. While the Iranian and Iraqi lines were on the brink of collapse, Syria, after many years of bloodshed and destruction, finally was defeated with the Fall of Damascus. Allied troops from the Arab coalition, the UK, America, France and other western aligned nations marched into the city after one of the largest sieges in history, leading to weeks of urban clashes with hostile insurgents and snipers. Nonetheless, most of Damascus was conquered in a month, followed by an international manhunt for Bashar Al Assad. With only some small pockets of Syrian resistance being scattered all over the country, the Allies increased their effort to fulfill their respective agendas. While Israel fully consolidated its gains on the Golan heights, Turkey began with the forceful resettlement of millions of Syrian refugees housing on its territory. Erdogan's plan was proposed as a „final solution“ of all of Turkeys main struggles: The refugee crisis and the „Kurdish question“. Remaining parts of Syria and Iraq were conquered by Kurdish militias or the Turkish Army, but pockets of Syrian forces kept attacking Kurdish militias like the YPG and SDF, as well as Kurdish civilians remained present. Which was accompanied by several offensives against strangleholds of the Syrian Army. Remaining Syrian forces went onto a "Final Solution" to terminate Kurdish people, regardless of soldiers or children. Syria troops marched into every Kurdish majority cities, and captured all males older than 14, many of which were rounded up and executed on sight, under the justification that they were terrorist fighters who allegedly attacked Syrian forces and civilians. The Syrian air force increased its indiscriminate bombing campaign against Kurdish strongholds, in order to evict Kurds who refused to abandon their cities. Kurdish civilians who did not flee the scene, despite the aerial bombing and shelling, were gathered and forcefully deported further into the Syrian desert, which was reminiscent of the Armenian Genocide during WW1. Because of this, many Kurdish civilians, especially women and children, were left in harsh conditions, without sufficient supplies of food, water and medicine, leading to the death of hundreds of civilians. These acts of violence could not be denied any longer by allied leadership, especially because reports about what has now become a Kurdish genocide became more and more widespread. As a result, protesters in Europe and the US called for anyone responsible for these acts against humanity, to be punished, while Israel and the GCC joined in verbal condemnation of these actions. Syrian forces which had previously launched these attacks would be relentlessly attacked by the Allied forces and would be held prisoner for remainder of the conflict, while several soldiers of the units fled and were added to the international manhunt set by NATO and the GCC. After increased violence between Kurds and Syrians in the southeast of Turkey, the Syrian army even „occupied“ Kurdish dominated areas in its own territory, leading to civil war like uprisings and the incarceration of almost all male Kurds in the region, who were brought into detention camps in Syria's center. Overall, one and a half million Kurds would be killed throughout the entire war. At the same time, violence between Israel and the Palestinian Territories escalated as well. The Gaza campaign remained in a deadlock, meaning Israeli forces focused on attacking and destroying Hamas tunnels and weapon depots, while marching deeper into the Gaza Strip. After the death of Palestinian leader Abbas through targeted assassination, Hamas and the Palestinian jihad vowed to retaliate in the biggest fashion possible, while a general uproar went through the Palestinian public. Hence, during Pessah, which is a Jewish holiday, Hamas-related extremists and militant Palestinians committed the one of the worst acts of terrorism in Israel's history. Extremists in the West Bank stormed houses of Israeli settlements at nightfall and massacred dozens of Israeli families during their celebrations, while Palestinian militias used Bm-21 and Qassam rockets to attack synagogues, while the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other cities were attacked by suicide bombers and gun attacks. In Jerusalem, almost a hundred militant Palestinians killed bystanders in the streets with knifes and improvised explosives, while a series of car bombs and suicide attacks lead to more deaths and chaos in the city. At the same time, hundreds of missiles were fired by Hamas and other terrorist organizations from the Gaza strip, and despite many being intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome defenses, the ammunition shortages of the last year still lead to many Israeli cities to be hit, although the casualty number of these attacks remained rather low. Israeli soldiers and security forces in Jerusalem engaged in street fights with Palestinian extremists the whole night, causing both Israeli and Palestinian civilians to be killed in the crossfires. During this massacre against the Israelis, almost 200 civilians and dozens of security forces were killed, which was proclaimed by Hamas as being the „divine punishment“ of the Israelis and a way of „seeking vengeance" for those who suffered dreadfully from their attacks. The Iranian leadership and its followers publicly sheered for this massacre, as did anti-Israeli protestors all over the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. The western allies on the other hand expressed their shock and support for Israel, although the US was the most vocal in its condemnation of these massacres. Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett announced that Hamas would finally be rooted out and destroyed, which was followed by a sudden retreat of Israeli forces in the Gaza strip. A few hours later, waves of Israeli Sayeret Matkal units were ordered to attack every single potential Hamas hideout, whilst receiving support of a couple of American jets and bombers. The result was the de facto carpet bombardment of the Gaza Strip, that lasted for several hours. The bombardment was so intense, that almost no missiles could be fired by Palestinian extremists in response. At the end, 80% of all buildings in Gaza were completely destroyed, while almost a third of its entire population was killed, by either being blown to smithereens, crushed in the rubble or even inhaling the smoke of burning buildings. Most of members and leaders of Hamas did not survive this night, leading the organization to cease its existence. The nations that saw cheer for the Israeli massacre were also the ones aggressively condemning the bombardment of Gaza, with some people in said nations even demanding that there should be war waged against Israel. And despite their initial support, many western Allies, except the US expressed their shock about this disproportionate retaliation. The Israeli army then moved into Gaza and occupied the entire Strip, as well as the Westbank, leading the Palestinian Territories to be dissolved as such.

Action in Northern Africa: Algeria and Morocco clash
Fighting continued to rage on in Africa, with most of the continent now entangled in the conflict at this point. While South African and Botswanan forces advanced further into Zimbabwe, the allied campaigns in central Africa and Angola remained more static. In the north, allied troops of the Sahel, supported by the British, French, Americans and Germans, advanced further into Algeria, while Morocco launched a push into the Algerian border region with help from Spanish, British and French forces. Especially the involvement of the latter caused some unrest and protests against the Allies in Morocco, due to its French colonial past. Nonetheless, the Moroccan army continued its fight, while at the same time, Tunisian forces attacked Algeria from the East, forcing Algeria to divert its attention from Libya to its own borders. The increased involvement of Morocco in the war also lead to a new flare-up of tensions in the Western Sahara conflict, where Morocco still occupied a large portion of the country since the peace agreements of 1991. Due to the Moroccan offensive, Algeria once again increased its support for the Polisario Front Movement in Western Sahara, supplying it with additional manpower, weaponry and intelligence. Both Algerian and Polisario forces attacked the Moroccan built wall separating the country into spheres of influence, leading Algerian troops to break through east of Mahbas, while the Polisario Front was able to destroy the wall in the sectors close to Guelta Zemmur, Oum Dreyga and Awsard. Additional Polisario assaults took place south of Techla and Guerguerat, forcing an aggressive reaction of Morocco, which lead to several accusations of human rights violations committed by the Moroccan army. With large parts of the Moroccan Army concentrated in Western Sahara, Algeria attempted to launch offensives by attacking Moroccan territory, allowing Algerian troops to take Oujda, while threatening Nador and Taza. Morocco on the other hand relocated some of its forces from Western Sahara further north, which gave it the opportunity to strike into Algeria's south, leading Algerian troops in Tindouf to be overwhelmed. The allied push coming from the Sahel and Mauritania on the other hand was slowed down significantly, due to the harsh conditions in the Saharan Desert. Russian made Iskander missile launchers were used by the Algerians to strike deep into Morocco, allowing it to diminish allied advantages in the air by hitting airfields and bases. Morocco itself was reduced to conduct only a few series of frontal airstrikes, due to Alegrias advantage in long-range SAM systems. The Moroccan navy, supported by the Spanish, French, British and even Portuguese tried to compensate for Morocco's losses in the air by supporting anti-air defenses and utilizing their capable SAM systems to assist in the coastal ground war. Meanwhile, Algerian submarines went on a harassment campaign attacking their Moroccan counterparts, while intercepting Allied ships. Morocco's southwest at the same time was overrun by Algerian forces, which were supported by Algeria more numerous attack helicopter fleet. The Atlas mountains on the other hand prevented a deeper incursion of Algerian troops into Morocco. At the same time, the Allied campaign against newly Revolutionist Power countries Burkina Faso, Benin, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Guinea proved to be quite successful, leading to portions of said nations to be occupied by Allied forces, resulting in some of the first calls of a ceasefire. Meanwhile, French forces landed in Revolutionist allied Madagascar, in order to protect the French islands in the Southern Atlantic off of East Africa from potential Revolutionist Power operations, while also denying the enemy access to important shipping routes. Off the coast of the Seychelles, Indian and Chinese vessels, that were heading towards Madagascar, engaged in one of the few naval battles in the Indian Ocean. On the island itself, Russian military officials and members of the Wagner-Group and Slavonic Corps supported the army of Madagascar in attacking and sabotaging allied troops. Chinese troops, who managed to escape to Madagascar after the fall of the Chinese naval base in Bangladesh, used this opportunity of chaos and confusion in Madagascar to sabotage the Indian naval base in the north of the islands, including bomb attacks and sabotage of communication devices. With Indian forces engaging against the small Chinese presence in Madagascar, and French troops fighting against the Wagner Group and Slavonic Corps and the Madagascan army, the leadership of the African island feared a total loss of control. Out of despair, Madagascan forces decided to use a very risky move to halt any military action on Madagascar: Using biological weapons. Madagascan soldiers collected the corpses of people who succumbed to the plague after the consumption of wild animals, and threw them into bodies of water which were used by mainly allied troops as water supplies. This attempt of weaponizing the disease failed, due to no foreign soldiers getting infected with the virus. Instead, this lead to a new wider outbreak of plague among rural citizens of Madagascar, causing panic not only in Africa, but also around the entire world. After this discovery, the French government decided to abandon the Madagascar campaign, as did India. Allied troops stationed on Madagascar were brought to Réunion and the Seychelles, where they were quarantined under the highest security protocols. The reckless actions of the Madagascan government, led to the Revolutionist Powers to avoid Madagascar completely, forcing the Wagner Group and Slavonic Corps to relocate towards Mozambique. Such methods were not only used by Madagascar though, since a few weeks after the first reports of Madagascar using improvised biological weapons, troops in the D.R.C used the same strategy to slow down the allied offensive at the Equatorial Front. Congolese soldiers used civilian and small cargo planes to drop the corpses of Ebola patients over allied positions at night, while also dumping several bodies into local water supplies as well. This caused another larger outbreak of Ebola, which was able to spread relatively quickly due to the conditions created by the war. Due to some soldiers of allied African countries indeed getting the disease, the allied approach towards the DRC and other African Beijing Powers in central Africa came to a halt, although an increased number of Congolese civilians getting infected as well. At the same time, South Africa reported various successes in its own campaigns, leading to major gains in Mozambique thanks to allied support from Tanzania and Kenya, while Zimbabwe was almost driven to the brink of collapse. The offensive against Zimbabwe, despite being in movement, was slowed down, forcing the South Africans to relocate more troops from Botswana to Zimbabwe. At the Horn of Africa, Somali forces were driven away to only a thin stretch of territory along the coastline due to attacks of allied African countries, Emirati, US, Turkish, Ugandan, Kenyan, Ethiopian and Burundian forces. Reports came in that the rouge territory of Somaliland, supported by UAE forces in their territory launched offensives against the Somali forces, increasing pressure on the Somalis themselves.

Allied African Advance
The Allies not only saw success in the Middle Eastern, Asian and European theatres, but also the African Theatre of the conflict. The East African coalition of Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia managed to push back against the revolutionists at the Central African front, leading to heavy losses of Sudanese and Colognes forces. With additional support of Western and South African forces, the Allies achieved considerable gains in Eritrea, which was forced to abandon its southern territory. Kenyan and Ethiopian forces, supported by US, Emirati and Turkish forces based in the Revolutionist country, advanced into the Somalian cities of Kismaayo, Jaimaame and Baidoa, meaning that the capital of Mogadishu was heavily exposed for allied aircraft and artillery. Allied forces also successfully invaded Sudan and the DRC, leading the Sudanese positions around Ad-Damzin, Al-Quadarif and Qala An Nahl, as well as the congolese cities of Bunia, Beni and Butembo to be taken by allied forces. Further south, the increased diplomatic pressure of South Africa pushed Tanzania to join the allied cause, leading Tanzania to open a second front against Mozambique, while in secret, South African diplomats assured Russia, that no Russian nationals operating in Mozambique would be harmed, unknowing that the Wagner group was responsible for the attacks on South African troops. At the South African Front, Allied forces continued to advance into Zimbabwe and Zambia and took Bulawayo and Choma, while other towns were taken later. South Africa also attacked into Zimbabwe and managed to occupy party of the strategically important A4 and A6 highways. Meanwhile, South African and Namibian troops in the west advanced deeper into Angola, by marching through the Lona National park and the Coutada Pública do Mucusso, causing severe damage to protected wildlife in these reservoirs. In the North, allied Sahel troops of Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad, supported by the French, British, Americans and the few remaining German forces, were able to push into the south of Algeria, but suffered heavy losses. Engaging in the Mediterranean and near Gibraltar, Algerian naval ships engaged with the Portuguese, British, Spanish and Moroccan naval ships to cut off supplies flowing into Morocco and Tunisia and cut off the Allied campaign in Africa. Italian naval forces instead monitored the Mediterranean for any illegal or enemy movement, while trying to prevent any refugees from reaching European shores, as members of the Lega Party had convinced the Italian Navy to refuse more support in Tunisia. Several NGO missions reported that they found and increasing numbered dead refugees in the sea, many of which had shot and burn wounds, leading to accusations that Italy was actively firing at refugee boats. These accusations were rejected, and many humanitarian helpers in Italy were arrested for „enemy propaganda“, while many private sea rescue ships said that they were attacked by the Italian navy. Further South, Nigeria, as a country with deep ties to allied nations like the US and the UK, wanted to bring an end to the fighting in Africa, and declared its support for the allied cause, as did Côte d'Ivoire, Togo and Liberia, who suffered economic struggles due to the ongoing war. Due to the joint effort of Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia and Mali, the Allies were able to push into the Revolutionist nations in West Africa, leading Quahigouya and Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso, Takoradi and Kumasi in Ghana, Kankan and Nzérékoré in Guinea, and ultimately Porto Novo, Parakou and Kandi in Benin to fall into Allied hands.

American Assault in Alaska
After the Aleutian Island Campaign and attacks on the Canadian and US mainland, Revolutionist forces of China, Russia and Mongolia still occupied most of the northern United States and Canada. Because of the increased naval presence of the United States and Canada around their homeland, further amphibious operations by the Revolutionist Powers were deemed impossible, with a last occupation being successful on the American Small Diomede island, as well as Saint Lawrence island. American and Canadian aircraft flew striking raids against the occupying forces on a regular basis, but neither the Revolutionist Powers, nor the Allies themselves saw this Arctic campaign as a priority, leading the number of allied airstrikes to gradually decline over the later half of 2025. This caused massive outcries from the Republicans who accused Kamala Harris for lacking responsibility to deal with invaders on the US's home soil, which in turn, led to increased verbal attacks of the president against the opposition, followed by several crackdowns on political opponents of Kamala. Truth was that the US still lacked in capacities to drive the Revolutionists out of the Alaskan islands and occupied territories, due to most of Americas military forces and equipment being stationed outside of US territory, mainly at the Eastern Front. This, in addition of the more and more obvious fact that president Kamala saw Russia, an economically inferior rival, as the lesser threat of the main Revolutionist Powers, and therefore did not see a re-tacking of the Aleutians as a priority, despite the political damage caused by the invasion. The revisionists on the other hand were also unable to move further in their attempt to close in to US mainland as much as possible, since the Allies heavily increased the pressure on Russia, China and Iran on multiple fronts at the same time, forcing the Russians to choose an different strategy for distracting the Americans, while also hurting their supply of resources. That is why Russia exploited the lack of int of the American leadership in the Arctic campaign by stationing medium range missile batteries on the Small Diomede Island, Saint Lawrence Island and Saint Matthew Island, which was occupied earlier in the same year. Russian and Chinese destroyers also relocated close to US and Canadian shores, while their submarines were not deployed as they feared that submarine-fired missiles would be falsely identified as a nuclear strike. Icebreaker vessels allowed the Russian and Chinese vessels to come closer to the northern coastline of Alaska, and while the harsh winter conditions of the Arctic made navigation difficult in the Chukchi Sea, it also allowed Revolutionist forces to remain less detected by the American and Canadian air force and navy. American troops were landed on Unalaska almost simultaneously, leading to small skirmishes between US, Canadian and Revolutionist forces. While these soldiers attempted to push the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian forces out of Unalaska, and hopefully the rest of the Aleutians, Russian forces on the Small Diomede Island and Saint Lawrence Island launched several missile salvos, while Russian vessels in the Chukchi Sea initiated Kalibr-missile attacks against the Alaskan coastline. Several missiles hit and damaged dozens of structures in Wales, while the attacks coming from Saint Lawrence island severely damaged the Alaskan port of West Nome. The salvos of Kalibr missiles managed to do damage against the several coal and oilfields north of Alaska, which disrupted the American coal supply from Alaska for multiple weeks, and into the new year. Most of these delays stemmed not from the damage itself, which was rather minor, but rather the fact that work had to be suspended due to the threat of additional attacks. Attack aircraft of both the US and Canada flew multiple sortie raids against Russian forces on the occupied American islands off the coast of Alaska, while anti-ship raids in the Chukchi Sea were hindered by severe weather conditions.

Brazil declares war: War of the Amazon
At the beginning of 2027, the conflict of Latin America and Venezuela and Caribbean, the conflict continued to spread further. Because of economical pressure Kamala and her administration was facing, due to the „Florida Blitz“ and the hostilities against Alaska, Canada and with Revolutionist forces on US soil, US command now faced severe issues. Either pull back 2 of their carriers operating in Europe, or shift aircraft from the Midwest to the Caribbean. The Kamala Administration ordered aircraft from US bases in the Midwest to be transferred to Florida. Despite this, some in the Kamala Administration ordered for carriers to be pulled from Europe to the Caribbean, but if it did happen, it would create further rifts between the US and AUF Command of Europe. F-15 Jets and bombers stationed in the American mainland were deployed to fly bombing raids against Cuba and occupied Caribbean Islands, while American aircraft from the Midwest and now arrived in Florida, participated in an aerial campaign in support of Puerto Rico. Additional strikes were performed against the Venezuelan coastline, although many aircraft had to be refueled midway during flight limited the number of approaching aircraft available for the attack. The relatively competent Venezuelan anti-air defense was able to inflict some casualties on the attackers with its S-300VM and Buk-M2E missiles, but since they lacked in numbers, those defenses were unable to fend off the combined forces of the American and Colombian air force, which received support from the French, Dutch and British. This lead only to minimal allied casualties, especially since American UAVs were able to detect moving anti-air batteries, although the US lost a stealth fighter in the battle for Venezuela's skies, which was exploited by revisionist propaganda. Colombian forces in the west were able to penetrate Venezuelan defenses along the borders, leading to the first foreign troops invading Venezuela. While the fighting in Guyana remained static and geographically limited, forces of French Guyana, with incoming reinforcements coming from the French mainland, were able to push deeper into Suriname. The increased aerial campaign of the Allies caused the majority of the Venezuelan air force and navy either to be destroyed or left without supplies, leading Venezuela to lose control of almost all islands of the Small Antilles it had a presence on, while Venezuelan troops in Trinidad and Tobago, as well as the ABC islands to hold on to their positions. The Allied air raids was then shifted to Cuna, which was deemed valuable in order to create a possible invasion of the island state, while allied vessels approached the Venezuelan coastline with almost no resistance of revisionist forces. Since most of the air and missile strikes conducted by the Colombians and Americans hit industrial as well as secondary government targets, Venezuela increasingly lacked in supplies and materials to keep up with its losses, causing new unrest among its civilian population. With the majority of Venezuela's air force being neutralized, American Marines were able to land on the Venezuelan islands of Gran Roque, Blanquilla and La Orchilla, allowing its air force to use these islands as additional launching platforms for aerial bombardment raids. American, British and French troops meanwhile supported local defenses of Haiti and the Dominican Republic against the Cuban invaders, leading to the first heavy casualties for the Cubans during this war. While the pressure on the Revolutionist Powers in the Caribbean was heavily increased, the fighting around Venezuela lead to a massive influx of refugees pouring in into the neighboring Brazil, causing violent clashes between Brazilian security forces and many, often unarmed, Venezuelan refugees. This escalation finally convinced the Brazilian leadership under Jair Bolsonaro to engage against Venezuela, leading already mobilized Brazilian forces to cross into Venezuela. The objective of Brazil's intervention was to stop the war from further escalating, while also preventing more refugees from reaching Brazil because of it. The Brazilian intervention also lead Venezuela's ally Bolivia to declare war against Brazil, the US and Colombia in opposition of the allied invasion of Venezuela. Bolivian forces, among them many special forces and mercenaries crossed into the border regions of Brazil, and set many of the Brazilian soy fields located close to the frontier ablaze, as a way of hurting Brazils economy, while sending a political message against the Allies. Bolivian field artillery and tanks at the same time shelled the Brazilian city of Rio Branco, and led to only minimal damage. While there were reports about Bolivian forces attempting to pass through the Pantanal wetlands, the Venezuelan counterattacks against the Brazilian invaders remained futile, due to Venezuela's mountainous south and the Amazon rainforest, which made any kind of infantry movement extremely difficult. Brazil decided to focus on the Venezuelan Campaign, using its own size and topography at the same to thwart any attempt of Bolivian advance in the south. Brazilian artillery then began to shell targets all over east Bolivia, while the Brazilian Air Force joined in air strikes with it's American and Colombian counterparts. The continuous airstrikes in Venezuela caused a total collapse of the already fragile Venezuelan power supply, leading to additional uprisings in the entire country, which were struck down with brute force by Maduro's regime. American airstrikes meanwhile weakened Cuban defenses enough to attempt an amphibious invasion of Cuba. But due to the limited manpower the US had available, the landed marines were unable to secure as many beachheads as originally planned, leading to incredibly bloody fighting on the Cuban beaches, forcing the US marines to abandon the invasion attempt. This was for many Americans reminiscent of the Bay of Pigs disaster, and therefore perceived as an American embarrassment. With the fighting in the Caribbean and South America intensifying, members of the Rio-Pact expressed their intention of engaging as well, in order to prevent the war from further escalating. This led to Rio-Pact members Chile and Peru to issue ultimatums to Bolivia, that if it does not terminate its hostilities with Brazil, it would be met with them joining the conflict against the Revolutionist Powers. The Venezuelan air force meanwhile managed to strike multiple targets along the Magdalena River in Colombia, destroying bridges and therefore bogged down Colombian supply lines and troop movement.

Asian Front: The Allies breakthrough in Korea
In the meantime, the Revolutionist Powers in the Asian Theatre began facing a crisis, after the increased pressure from the Allies, who managed to assemble an increased capacity of resources for manpower and materials. Due to the breakthroughs in the Southern Pacific, as well as China now struggling to provide resources after the years of fighting the blockades, the Allies broke through the stalemate in Korea in multiple sectors. While the Chinese reinforced their positions north of Wonju, the Revolutionist Powers prepared another defensive line, stretching from Incheon, over Chuncheon to Guangneung, in the event a full retreat was called. The Allies destroyed the Revolutionist lines encroaching Seoul in the northwest, while another offensive using aerial strikes, long range artillery bombardment with US M270s, M142 HIMARS, M109A6 Palodins, and South Korean K9 Thunders, and missiles strikes allowed the Allies to retake Hwado. The increased pressure forced North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un and Chinese president Xi Jinping to authorize a wide-scale attack with the use of chemical weapons, which were used by the Chinese and North Korean forces along the entire front. The ongoing carnage in Korea also continued to create massive influxes of refugees, which were trying to seek shelter both north and south of the front. In the north, North Koreans who were suffering from mass starvation and disease because of the war tried to flee towards China and Russia, forcing those to expend additional forces just for the handling of those refugee waves. In the south, millions of South Koreans attempted to escape massive armies combating each other in a relatively, small patch of terrain. This refugee situation became one of the worst humanitarian disasters in human history, often referred to as the „Great Korean Exodus“. South Koreas dependence on imported goods, such as food, also caused famine across the Peninsula, with millions of South Koreans starving since most of the war. The Allies were able to ship in more and more supplies, but the majority of those were relegated to the troops fighting at the front and not the civilian population. Some newly founded humanitarian organizations, which used financial infrastructural resources from the unofficially disbanded United Nations, organized the supply of food for almost 1 million Koreans, while using cargo vessels, as well as a contingent of European airships to bring thousands of Koreans to safety, with most of them being brought to Japan, Philippines, Australia, Singapore and some of the Micro states in the Pacific, as well as New Zealand, where they were waiting to be transferred to asylum camps in said countries. The pacific islands aside, most of the nations harboring refugees from the Eastern Front were rather reluctant to engage in humanitarian support for the civilians they hosted, with some even showing hostile behavior against the refugees. At the same time, logistics proved to be an increasingly troubling aspect for the Chinese, since the additional focus on the ASEAN and Indian fronts, as well as years of blockades and shortages of fuel and other resources made it more and more difficult to provide the Chinese forces in Korea with the materials they need to cope with the allied advance. Due to the combination of aerial, naval and artillery bombardment, the Allies finally accomplished a breakthrough around Wonju, forcing the Revolutionist to use the mountains along the eastern coastline of the Peninsula to fortify their positions, while in the west falling back the old DMZ lines of pre-war Korea. The growing dominance of Allied naval assets and aircraft also allowed the Allies to land troops on Chinese occupied Jeju, leading the island to fall back into allied hands after two weeks of fighting. Since Jeju was now available again as a staging ground for allied operations, the US, as well as Japan and South Korea used it to conduct missile strikes and stealth bomber raids against the Chinese coastline, targeting anti-air and ASM batteries, while also increasingly hitting the remaining industrial targets and naval assets in the East China Sea and in the Chinese city of Qingdao. This growing pressure on the Chinese military lead to new bursts of insurgence and rebellion inside China, which suffered massively under shortages of various goods because of the Allied blockades. In the Plateau of Tibet, Tibetan freedom fighters launched a new wave of insurgensies against the Chinese, leading to attacks being conducted against several military and police installations, which forced the Chinese regime of Xi Jinping to relocate more security forces into Tibet. While new protests and riots also broke out in annexed Hong Kong, with brutal and violent reactions of the Chinese military as a result, Chinese forces in Revolutionist Nepal faced a new guerilla campaign against themselves, conducted by Allied recruited Gurkha rebels, which were supported by the UK, India and financially Singapore and Brunei.

__NEWSECTIONLINK__