Malazan Empire: Werthead - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

Ukraine has set a target of producing 7 million drones in 2026, almost double the number they produced in 2025. They plan to expand the "denial area" along the front from 20km to almost 100km, which would make resupply virtually impossible for front-line Russian units.

Hegseth is apparently being "wooed" by Ukraine to greenlight Tomahawks based on a ground-launch system, apparently similar to systems already field-tested by British and Ukrainian engineers for the Nightfall project. This would remove the technical difficulties with naval or air-launched Tomahawks that some American engineers had cited as a major obstacle (as it would require more direct American involvement in targeting and launching).

Russia has withdrawn in full from Qamishlo Airport in NE Syria and returned the base to Syrian government control.

A Russian assault squad attempted to use an open top, unarmored truck to charge Ukrainian lines near Dobropillya. This went about as well as you could expect.

Perun on some of the challenges faced by both sides in 2025 and what they'll face in 2026, especially economically.

The Ukraine-Russia conflict can currently be characterised as an attrition of resources, with Russia's primary resource being lives and its massive stockpile of Soviet-era equipment, which was meant to be its trump card in any war against NATO. Ukraine's primary resource in this exchange is territory.

The idea is that Russia's resources being drained are irreplaceable (you can't train a new Russian from birth to combat readiness in under 18 years; you can't magic 10,000 new tanks into existence in the blink of an eye) and Ukraine's are not. Ukraine's territory is still there, and can be regained at a later date (even potentially a much later date).

This doesn't mean that Ukraine's casualties are negligible or unimportant - very much not so - but Ukraine has managed to sustain far less casualties than Russia (even given the 3:1 population disparity) and most of its casualties are injured, who can either return to service later or can pursue other tasks in support of the war. More than 50% of Russia's casualties (recently, anyway) are KIA and are of no further value.

This creates a difficult problem for Ukraine because every time it's attempted a full offensive, it's either taken advantage of poor Russian defences or deployments (in the Kharkiv offensive of 2022, or the Kursk Offensive of 2024) to achieve significant breakthroughs with light casualties, or it has seen its favourable kill:loss ratio shift dramatically against it (as in the 2023 counteroffensive). This has encouraged Ukraine to remain on the defensive to inflict massive casualties on the Russians even if the Russians eventually do seize the territory.

The golden ticket for Ukraine to win the war on the battlefield is to find a way of breaching a sector on the front without incurring massive casualties, having forces ready to exploit such a breach and then reinforcements available to start creating irresistible momentum that can sustain a large-scale strategic victory that encourages local Russian forces to give ground. This is difficult for Ukraine given its normal numerical inferiority to the Russians, the Russians having had, in some areas, almost four years to build defences and the Russian tendency to shoot people trying to retreat. Still, there have been various ideas on how it might be possible, through greater use of drones or perhaps fighting along the coast which gives them only one flank to worry about (several probing attacks and reconnaissance along the Black Sea coast has only yielded questionable results; this involves crossing the mouth of the Dnipro under heavy fire, which the Russians have found impossible in the other direction, or landing on the easily-cut-off Kilburn Spit).

Otherwise it feels like Ukraine is either holding out for a peace deal or trying to outburn Russia's resources to either force Russia to retreat or to come seriously to the negotiating table. With Russian casualties at a very high level and its recruitment rate possibly at its worst rate of the war (some suggestions Russia lost four times as many troops dead, let alone injured, in December alone as it was able to recruit), this may be possible.

The Abraham Lincoln carrier group is likely in position to strike Iran fairly imminently (certainly next 24 hours). Khamenei has apparently been relocated to a "secret bunker" under Tehran, and his third son has taken over management of the leader's office and is now the main communication channel with the security forces.

Dutch airline KLM has suspended all flights to Tel Aviv, Dubai, Dammam and Riyadh until further notice.

Apparently Vance, Rubio and Hegseth have aligned in recommending an attack on Iran, and Israel has returned to backing it once confidence of interception incoming missiles is high. Kushner and Witkoff have been arguing about doing a new nuclear deal with the regime, and Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been arguing against it (Qatar even putting the use of their territory in question).

More than one source now saying they believe Ukraine has the capacity to launch an offensive in the spring or summer of 2026. Ukraine was unable to undertaken offensive operations in 2025 due to manpower restrictions in the early part of the year and then the difficulty in fending off the Pokrovsk attack later in the year, but thanks to manpower problems easing mid-year and Russia now experiencing significant manpower issues instead, that may shift the balance of power. Whether Ukraine can retake significant territory in the face of Russian defences remains a major question.

400 power generators from Poland's strategic reserve have been sent to Ukraine to help it weather the attacks on its energy infrastructure.

Russian forces in Kupyansk are now surrounded in a single downtown block, but are refusing to surrender. The Ukrainians are weighing negotiating with them or just flattening the block. Their patience with door-to-door fighting  at a heavy cost seems to be at an end in this area.

Putin possibly making a dig at Epstein Island, by talking about Denmark selling the Virgin Islands to the US.

It is extremely questionable if Iran can actually respond against all the US military bases in enough force to disable them. They almost certainly can't hit a carrier strike group or B-52s flying from the US mainland, so they'd have to hit civilian targets in Israel and possibly other countries (one reason the normally very cooperative Qatar has suddenly suggested that the US might not be able to use its airbase for attacks on Iran, and leaked sources claiming they might consider closing it altogether), and of course bringing Israel and its airforce into the fight (making up for a US deficit in the region at the moment) seals the fate of Iran's entire military infrastructure.

I think the current estimate is that almost 50% of Iran's ballistic missile stockpile was destroyed or used last summer, a lot of it unused on the ground, so how much of a threat can Iran be? But the Israelis were very worried about how many missiles got through their defences, particularly towards the end; 33 Israelis were killed and over 3200 were injured. And Israel has not rebuilt its interceptor stockpiles 100% since then, so there is some concern in Israel about how that would go again.

The real question is how much damage you can do to the regime whilst not remotely risking hitting the protesting civilians, whom in many cases are in proximity to government targets like police stations and regional IRGC barracks. Strategically targeting the regime to weaken it enough to a civilian uprising without causing collateral damage to said civilians is a very specific type of attack I'm not sure we've really seen before.