Malazan Empire: Mentalist - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

UA is concerned about suspension of grain traffic to Odessa, and how this will affect the World Food Program. In particular, Maersk stated they won't be sending any further cargo ships to Greater Odessa, re-routing everything to Romania.

The orcs have also declared restrictions for shipping in their territorial waters in the Black Sea.

Kazakhstan halved its oil production, due to disruptions of Black Sea exports.

This sea-aimed confrontation that started with UA's shaping operations on Crimea is spreading both ways. Magyar's troops are shifting their focus from Northern Crimea (that's been without power for 3 weeks now) further south, into the densely populated tourist-oriented coastal strip.

Drapatyj is a good pick, but he's got zero skills at ionternal politics, so I dunno how long he'll last.

He was already busted down once from a higher post, so I'm worried the deep establishment officer corps will do what they can to undermine him.

I'm curious who the head of the General Staff will be.

Messi is fine. The rest of the team has issues with rough play/histrionics. There was some ref deference to the team (and Messi, specifically), but nothing egregious, imho. And Argentina DID pull off some insane comebacks with last-ditch pressure, so they deserve credit for that. Really wish I saw the Cabo Verde game, but I had my own game during that.


Scaloni correctly saw they were out-classed by Spain and tried to shut the game down and take the gamble on PKs (historically, UEFA teams are pretty bad at those).

Spain is just on another level, though.

I am very happy that Torres was the one who got the goal. The dude's been coming off the bench every game, putting himself in good spots and receiving passes, and missed something like 30 shots throughout the tournament. But unlike Olise, he didn't give up, and eventually, he hammered one home when it counted the most. Much better story than the much-touted "Yamal taking over from Messi", since Yamal didn't have a particularly great tournament, all-in-all.

Argentina will need to re-invent itself without Messi, so it'll be interesting to see if they can keep themselves relevant in the upcoming competitions.

Ah well, bring on the Euro qualifiers & Nations League, so that I can get frustrated with Ukraine all over again.

Werthead, on 19 July 2026 - 09:35 PM, said:

I would be stunned if Ze re-instated Fedorov as MoD.

Ukrainian political tradition is to take a low-level functionary job that's tangentially related to Defense, and then transfer ALL the powers and responsibilities of the MoD to it, but only while Fedorov occupies it.


He was also speaking to various troop type commanders today, apparently looking for a potential Syrsky replacement. Which could be quite interesting.

 Garak, on 15 July 2026 - 11:27 PM, said:

Zelensky has a bad habit of removing anyone who starts becoming excessively popular/trusted by the public.