Mike Baker

It's increasingly targeting the people responsible for planning, managing and sustaining Russia's war effort.

Davidov appears to fit within that strategy.

Over the past two years, a growing number of senior Russian military officials have been killed in bombings and covert operations far from the front lines.

In April 2025, the deputy chief of the Russian General Staff's Main Operational Directorate

was killed in a car bombing in the same neighborhood where Davidov was targeted this week.

At the end of December, the head of the General Staff's Army Operational Training Directorate was also killed in a similar attack.

And in December of 2024, the commander responsible for Russia's nuclear and chemical defense forces died in an explosion outside a residential building.

Look, that's not just a security problem.

It's a political embarrassment for the Kremlin.

And for Russia's senior military leadership, it raises the uncomfortable question once again.

If some of the country's most protected officers can be reached hundreds of miles from the front, well, who might be next?

Okay, I want to shift to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where a conflict many hoped was easing has once again erupted into violence after Islamabad carried out airstrikes inside Afghanistan, drawing competing claims about who was killed.

In the early hours of Wednesday, Pakistani aircraft carried out strikes inside Afghanistan, targeting locations in the eastern border provinces of Khost, Kunar, and Paktika.

These strikes shatter more than a month of relative calm along the Afghan-Pakistan border and become the deadliest attacks seen in weeks.

And they reignite a conflict that has killed hundreds of people since late February.

In other words, this is the latest chapter in a war that's survived failed ceasefires, collapsed peace talks, and months of military escalation.

And almost immediately, the two governments began telling completely different stories about what had happened.

A Taliban spokesman spoke with CBS News, confirming that 13 people were killed, including 11 children, one woman, and an elderly man.

Another 14 people were reportedly, according to his account, wounded.

However, Pakistan says the operation killed 26 militants.