Malazan Empire: Mentalist - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

trump sanctioned RosNeft and LukOil. Apparently, he's getting tired from putler refusing to accept a very advantageous ceasefire.

EU to approve 19th sanctions package tomorrow. Should hit more banks and shadow fleet vessels, as well as some Chinese and Indian oil importers.
-more importantly, the EU might be close to a breakthrough in approving the "loan using the frozen assets as collateral" scheme. Which would be huge, b/c that would basically cover UA's budget for the next 2 years, giving it some much-needed stability.

UAF hit another chemical plant, this one's in the suburbs of Chelyabinsk (The Urals, muscovy's industrial heartland). This recent set of strikes is targeting the components of both the explosives and fertilizers production chains.

Zelensky was in Sweden today, and signed a letter of intent to buy 150 Gripen fighters, to have them form the core of UA's air force. Eventually, since the first planes won't be produced until 2028, at the earliest.
Big news and all, but I have some concerns as to where the money for these is gonna come from. Again, though: long term agreements are ensuring some stability, which is obviously nice.

Rubio spoke to Lavrov, aaaaannd...

"The preparations for the Budapest summit are now on hold". Because the 2 sides don't have enough in common to talk about. lol.

Meanwhile, the orcs are seeping into both Kup'yans'k and the S outskirts of Pokrovs'k in greater numbers. Which isn't great.

2 European refineries that process muscovite oil suddenly exploded. One in Romania, and one in Hungary. Poles and Romanians report detaining groups of muscovite saboteurs. what an odd coincidence.

The Orenburg Gas plant, which processes natural gas for chemical industry was hit twice. It's the largest plant in muscovy, and it processes Kazakh gas, so there's been a break in that production chain now.

A bunch of things happening in the EU after everyone got spooked by trump's new attempt to push pro-putler agenda for a while. More negotiations on that "loan secured by orc frozen assets" scheme, with some apparent progress. Also, there's a plan to make EU assession a graduated process, where the prospective members could get a "halfway status", w/o a full veto vote for a while. The idea is to make it more palatable to Hungary to at least allow Brussels to start the negotiation process w/ UA and Moldova this way.

Also, some more military assistance from allies.

Overall, situation's deteriorating a bit, but not in a critical fashion. yet.

Macros, on 17 October 2025 - 09:40 PM, said:

In order to give Ukraine the frozen assets, they would have to seize them.

And seizing them without a court order would be bad because *checks notes* it would undermine investors' confidence as to keeping their money in Europe.

So instead, they want to issue Ukraine an interest free loan. Where Moscow's future reparations obligations are considered collateral. So that then in the future, Moscow will have to pay Ukraine reparations, in order to get back its frozen assets. And Ukraine will use that reparations money (that's supposed to go towards reconstructing what the orcs destroyed) to pay off the loan to the EU (for wartime costs)

US manufacturer showed off new truck launchers capable of launching HIMARS, Tomahawk missiles or Switchblade 600 drones. They just happened to finalize the design.


The important thing about Feodosiya is that it was the biggest import point- the terminal where crude and other fuel products could be unloaded from tankers into fuel tanks, and then be distributed, more locally, via either trucks or rail. Now most supply has to come through Kerch, which is a notable bottleneck- and you obviously can't bring in as much by train as you could via an oil tanker.

Tomorrow is the next Rammstein meeting in Brussels, so there'll probably be more anti-air systems announcements; though in order to deal with the air strikes, UA needs money to ramp up interceptor frone production first; and secondly it needs better deep strike capabilities to level the Alabuga drone factory (and other similar facilities).Because trying to intercept enverything is a bit of a losing battle proposition.

The recent counter-attacking operations (calling it a counter-offensive would be overestimating the scale) on the Orikhiv Axis in Zaporizhya helped UAF regain some territory along the Yanchekrak river. After Stepove, the only other settlement N of the river will be Lobkove. If they are able to push the orcs back behind the river, then they'll put a real flankling pinch on the salient that's trying to push via Kam'yans'ke (which is split in half by the Yanchekrak where it joins the Dnipro) towards Stepnohirs'k. Again, if they are able to establish themselves there, they'll be in artillery range of Zaporizhya (city). And, as is becoming far more worrying- close to FPV drone range. Unlike artillery shelling, where residents get at least some warning of incoming shellings, indiscriminate FPV drone attacks on civilians can be launched by a DRG from nearly anywhere. These types of attacks are far more likely to spur panic and evacuations among civilian populations.

There's a lot of conflicting info on the Dobropillya salient, and the orcs' attempts to regain initiative and try to "counter-surround" the attacking UAF troops. Situation remains murky, and Syrsky and co's daily pronouncements of "in some areas of the Pokrovs'k front, we've advanced 1.6 km" in the situation where there absolutely is no stable line of control aren't really helping.

The orcs continue feeling their budget crunch. Regional transfers are being cut, so now they are looking at legislating so that unregistered self-employed & unemployed citizens should be forced to pay for their own mandatory health insurance (currently, the regional budgets cover them). This addresses both the regions' immediate money shortages, but also the state's more long-term objective to crack down on those who are still financially independent from the state, as putler's camarilla is trying to push for restoration of the state-centric economy.

Realistically, a metric fuckton of people will nominate Trump for things he did (and will do) prior to January 2026.
And he is going to be a strong candidate.... next year.

There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell he was going to win it in 2025, and I'm so happy I can finally stop hearing about this.


I also really wish we'd stop hearing about the Flamingo missiles until we see swarms of them flying across the border and blowing shit up.