Malazan Empire: Mentalist - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

Ukraine has shot down a Tu-22M3 bomber after it launched cruise missiles from what was supposed to be safely outside AA range. Ukraine reportedly used an upgraded anti-air missile, possible the same one used in recent shootdowns of Su-34s and Su-35s. Some reports this is a modified Patriot, others that's actually a hugely upgraded S-200 (!).
Ukraine has scored a big scalp, the commander of the 59th Guards Signal Brigade was killed in a Storm Shadow strike on his unit's headquarters in Luhansk.

One Russian analyst, Shlepchenko, has said that he does not expect a Russian major breakthrough, and at best a very slow pushback of Ukrainian forces modest distances in some areas. His analysis chimes with a few opinions I've seen recently that both Ukraine and Russia are experiencing deficiencies in recruitment, ammunition, war fatigue, morale issues and equipment issues almost simultaneously with one another, and western political/journalistic analyses have not accounted for Russian problems in these areas whilst Ukraine is also suffering from them. He estimates that the war will continue into 2027 at this rate.

Russian partisan units continuing to shell Belgorod, which surprised me, I thought that'd withdrawn. Heavier rockets were used to hit Russian military and police sites in and another the city, and Russia was force to use some pretty big AA rockets to shoot them down, which is quite expensive.

A Buryatian soldier has returned home to to find that robbers broke into his house and stole everything, even unbolting and scarpering off with the toilet. His income from fighting in Ukraine for two years is basically going to go entirely on replacing his property.