Malazan Empire: Mentalist - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

ugh

Such a shitshow b/w Ze and the anti-corruption institutions (National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and Special Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO))

I don't have the energy to go into this now. Hopefully the pressure from both the civil society orgs in UA, as well as international donors is enough to get them to course-correct on this.

so much hype around the 5 patriot batteries (or maybe launchers) that Germany's supposed to buy for UA "any week now"

As nice as those are, it's insane to expect to use Patriots to repel Shahed attacks. A single missile costs like 50 times as much as a drone, and the orcs are scaling up production, aiming to lauch over 1k drones/night.

It's unfeasible to stop those using hi-tech conventional means. More likely solution is low-cost interceptor drones- and UA is already using those, but they ALSO need to scale up production, because you need numbers to ensure 100% rate interception- and as the orcs are improving their shaheds to include more explosives, any single one making impact is a potential firestorm.

While it looks like the Sumy offensive is getting rolled up on the flank, they did succeed in breaking into Yunakivka, which is the next settlement on the Sudzha-Sumy highway. So that's not ideal.


The orcs are also inching their way to the outskirts of the Pokrovs'k-Myrnohrad agglomeration. DRGs are trying to set up ambushes inside. I'm expecting street fighting to start there by the end of the summer, unfortunately.

So, all in all, war of attrition, as usual.

EU passed 18th package of sanctions.

Apparently, the biggest privately-owned refinery in India is now unable to sell its products to the EU. it is 49% owned by Rosneft, and they were trying to sell their share to the owners of the second-largest importer of Muscovite oil in India. So that's a bit of a pickle for India now.

UAF hitting more chemical plants with drones. Ongoing strikes on Moscow, which continue to disrupt airports, but not to such a degree as before.

Finished re-reading "Allow of Law" last night.
Onto "Shadows of Self"

Zelensky is shuffling his cabinet. Not sure what effect that'll have.

Orcs haven't been firing at Kyiv, since Keith Kellogg is there. So instead they've been droning other, less defended cities.

The AN-124 that flew over Kyiv last week was a plane coming out of the Antonov Aviation plant having finished modernization. It's been in maintenance/modernization since 2021, and it's finally been finished. So it flew off to a safe spot in Germany.