Malazan Empire: Werthead - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

Some Wildberries facilities not destroyed by drones have basically declared open season, with management, staff and, in some cases, members of the public raiding logistics buildings and making off with goods, which are then written off by management as "destroyed by drones." Obviously this works better if the facility has been hit by drones, but apparently some logistics hubs that haven't been are still trying it on.

Ukraine has blown up the Wildberries logistics hub in Tula. This is a huge facility and it caught fire after the initial explosion, with some signs it might be burning to the ground. This would disrupt, if not halt, Wildberries operations across the entire Tula region. The company is now in full-blown panic mode, demanding Russian state intervention to stop the company collapsing. Ukraine also hit the Wildberries facility in Krasny Bor, Leningrad region.

The Bashneft refinery in Ufa might be offline for some time. The drone strike destroyed the primary processing unit, which cannot be replaced easily or cheaply.

Ukraine has hit a dam in Belgorod Oblast with air-launched missiles.

Russian customers filling up plastic containers at a petrol station in Rostov-on-Don accidentally set fire to the fuel, burning down the petrol station and their own cars.

Ukrainian company Fire Point has said it has developed anti-orbital ballistic missile capability and will shoot down any of Russian's Starlink competitor satellites that pass over Ukrainian territory. Obviously, Russia can't do the same to Starlink (not without a massive escalation of the conflict to include the United States).

The S-400 unit defending the Kerch Strait Bridge has taken another hit, losing another launcher.

Russian General Sobolev has become the first Russian military officer to request a larger mobilisation in the autumn. He also said that Russia must completely capture all of Ukraine.

North Korea has deployed a missile unit to Russia equipped with multiple launchers and 90 personnel. Ukraine has said the unit is a legitimate target and will be destroyed.

Laura Loomer has castigated Putin for supplying weapons and intelligence to Iran to kill American personnel in the Gulf. She suggested, if she were the American President, that the leader of a country doing that would suffer a mysterious heart attack very quickly. Russian media has gone pretty berserk in response.

Ukrainian fire units arriving in France to help fight wildfires were given a hero's welcome.

Rumours sweeping Moscow that Commander-in-Chief of Russia's Aerospace Forces Chaiko was killed in the bombing of the Italian restaurant in Moscow last week, and the news is being suppressed for morale. New graves have been dug at the Troyekurovskoye cemetery in Moscow, where senior state officials are buried, and one worker said one was "for the general."

Russian tourists stopped at a cafe in Georgia and were greeted by a sign that said, by agreeing to dine there, they agreed that Vladimir Putin was a war criminal and they support the territorial integrity of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

Russia has now lost a third of its bulk carriers for cargo and fuel transportation out of the Black Sea.

Ukraine's home-grown Patriot alternative, Freyja, now has 10 countries signed on to support its construction. Ukraine, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom will participate in the project, and stand to gain from Ukrainian production capabilities.

Boris Nadezhdin, the former Russian Presidential candidate who fiercely criticised Putin recently, has managed to leave the country and has relocated to France.

A few weeks ago, 20% of Russian farms were on the verge of bankruptcy. The Russian farming federation now warns that figure is closer to a third.

Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul has said that when he was ambassador, it was clear that Putin only trusted his briefings from the FSB, SVR and military. If those sources are not giving him good information, he will make bad decisions, which explains quite a lot of the war.

The Russia Wildberries facility in Novosemeykino was destroyed by a very fast-moving drone not like anything we've see in the field before. Possibly a test run of the Triada Robotics "Bravo" drone, which is capable of travelling at over 700 km/h.

The Saratov refinery has been hit yet again, and Ufa twice in as many days.

The Balzi Rossi restaurant in Moscow has been bombed. The bomber was stopped at the door and detonated the device, killing themselves, a security guard and another customer. If the bomb had gone off in the packed dining area it would have been a lot worse. The cause and motive remains unclear; some Russian sources claiming the bomber was actually a courier and may not have been aware of their cargo.

Engels Airfield has been hit yet again.

Ukraine is apparently now intensifying its strikes on long-range ballistic missile launch sites inside Russian territory, to try to disrupt launches before they happen.

The Russian Volunteer Corps has reported growing requests from Russian PoWs to join the unit and fight for Ukraine. However, wary of possible sabotage, they cap the number of ex-PoWs in any given unit to around 15% of the total strength of the unit.

Some American defence companies are apparently still dismissive of Ukrainian innovation, showing both a lack of skill and desire to innovate as rapidly as the Ukrainians and (to a lesser extent) the Russians are doing in the conflict. Ukrainian mediators are finding it frustrating trying to teach the Americans how to perform low-cost drone interceptions in the Gulf when their first instinct is to fire off a $4 million interceptor that cannot be replaced for two years.

Russian oil refining is now at its lowest levels since May 2002. 

Georgian refineries are moving away from using Russian crude imports.

Another massive Ukrainian strike on Crimea. Channel 4 News analysis that Ukrainian drone strikes are now keeping pace with Russian drone strikes on Ukraine, except Ukraine is shooting down more Russian drones than vice versa. Russian use of ballistic missiles is resulting in higher damage, but Ukrainian use of ballistic missiles against Russian military targets is probably not too far away.

Ukraine has expanded its strikes on Russia to 52 of the country's 83 regions. At the start of the year, only 36 regions had been struck.

A Ukrainian F-16 used its M61 Vulcan cannon to shoot down a Russian Geran-2 loitering munition, one of the few times an F-16 gun kill has been captured on camera. Ukrainian Air Force pilots are advised not to try doing this after one pilot missed and then flew straight into the drone, losing the aircraft, last year, but in this case the F-16 had apparently exhausted its missiles against other targets. A Mirage 2000-5F also shot down a Shahed using a missile, a suboptimal value exchange but necessary before it reached a target.

Ukraine is making renewed use of the Hawk AA system supplied by the US and Spain. Some had derided the Hawk deliveries early in the war as not being altogether useful, but, after modifications, the system is proving very useful against drones.

Ukraine has deployed a new variant of the Flamingo with hugely improved avionics, allowing it to skim treetops.

Some small signs of very modest Ukrainian advances on the Lyman and Zaporizhzhia fronts, where Ukraine is starting to use combined arms again as Russian drone coverage is pushed back.

The Wildberries logistics centre in the Vladimir region has been destroyed.

Russian air defences engaged a Ukrainian drone over Gelendzhik, Krasnodar region. The drone crashed onto a crowded beach and killed 3 civilians, injuring 13. Russian AA doctrine has been extremely lax for the whole war but this was particularly poor.

Ukrainian drones hit the vehicle carrier Nadezhda off the coast of Novorossiysk. Some claims the ferry had been converted to military use.

Ukraine's strike campaign has cost Russia over $26 billion since January, including destroyed military hardware, refinery equipment, trucks, tankers, ships and the value of fuel that has gone up in smoke. 

Absolutely stunning.

Ukraine has dispatched 10 fire trucks and 70 personnel to assist in the fire-fighting in France's Bordeaux region.

Volgograd's Wildberries distribution centre was completely destroyed in an overnight drone strike. The nearby Lukoil refinery was also hit hard.

Some projections suggesting that over a third of Russia's farming enterprises are operating in severe debt, to the point of bankruptcy. The farming sector has been fiercely critical of the lack of government support.

Apparently Trump has stopped pressuring Zelensky to cede the Donbas and is instead now mulling over a ceasefire based on current lines. The Russians are unimpressed by this move.

Substantial protests in Kyiv and several other Ukrainian cities calling for Fedorov's reinstatement.

The Ukrainian counter-offensive on the Dnipropetrovsk front has gained significant momentum. Fighting is underway near Muravka, while Ukrainian forces are counterattacking from several directions toward Komar and east of Voskresenka. Ukraine has intensified drone attacks around Novopavlivka and Filiia. Ukrainian forces advanced toward Uspenivka, gained ground near Rybne, took part of Berezove after attacking from Ternove, and entered Zaporizke, where both sides are reported to be engaged in close-range combat. Russian forces dislodged Ukrainians from positions in Verbove, but are not confident they can hold the position.

Ukrainian supply interdiction drones have now reached the occupied twin cities of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, carrying out attacks on Russian resupply tankers and military trucks.

Ukraine will produce an anticipated 7 million drones this year, whilst the US is struggling to hit a target of around 200,000.

Large and expensive Russian surveillance drones operated 12+ miles across the border in Russian airspace have come under attack, with one destroyed by Ukrainian interceptors. The Russian drones have to pull back, but of course this limits their usefulness in scanning inside Ukrainian territory.

The largest Russian SAM battery protecting the Kerch Strait Bridge has been heavily damaged.

Ukrainian heavy-lift drones are now taking over the final delivery run of taking body armour, Starlink terminals and ammunition to front-line units. So far, this seems successful but only applied on a limited scale.

Almost 1600 Russian casualties recorded and verified yesterday (again, only a small fraction of the true number), again the largest number in some considerable time. A steady uptick in the daily rate over the last two weeks or so.