❗️Putin: During BRICS chairmanship, Russia will focus on increasing coordination and joint search for answers to challenges and threats

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❗️Russia, assuming responsibilities of chairman of BRICS, counts on fruitful work with all countries

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On New Year's Eve, riots occurred in Berlin, as a result of which 15 police officers were injured and more than 230 people were detained, the police said.

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US pulls back aircraft carrier from Mediterranean

The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group is to depart from the Eastern Mediterranean Sea in the “coming days,” unnamed US officials have told ABC News. Together with other surface ships that comprise the strike group, the US Navy’s largest aircraft carrier will reportedly return to its homeport in Norfolk, Virginia, where it will prepare for future deployments.

In October, the carrier strike group was redirected to the Eastern Mediterranean to bolster “regional deterrence” after the latest flare-up of the Palestine-Israel conflict.

Despite the return of the aircraft carrier, the US will retain sufficient military capability in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, sources were cited as saying. The Pentagon has not offered any official comment on the decision to bring back the aircraft carrier strike group.

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📹 Russian Grad MLRS destroys Ukrainian manpower on right bank of Dnieper River

Russian soldiers received the coordinates of an accumulation of Ukrainian manpower from artillery spotters. After several shell strikes, the Grad crew fired a full volley at the enemy.

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❗️On December 31, the Russian Armed Forces, using high-precision long-range air-based weapons, struck infrastructure at airfields where Storm Shadow cruise missile carriers were based, hitting all targets, the Defense Ministry reports

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❗️Russian troops hit an enterprise for the production of drones near the city of Chuguev, Kharkov region, four fuel depots for Ukrainian military equipment in the Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk regions, as well as in the settlement of Konstantinovka, the Defense Ministry reports

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❗️Ukraine is not our enemy, but those who want to achieve the strategic defeat of Russia, they are enemies, Putin said at a meeting with the military at the Vishnevsky Military Hospital

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Putin at meeting with military personnel:

◾️They want to divide Russia, the Kiev regime has been nurtured for a long time to escalate the conflict;

◾️The situation on the battlefield is changing, the enemy is being weakened;

◾️Ukraine is running out of military equipment, whereas we will increase production;

◾️The rhetoric in the West is changing and they are looking for a way to end the conflict. Russia also wants to end the conflict in Ukraine, but on our terms;

◾️Kiev wants to intimidate Russia, but Russia will step up attacks on military facilities - not on moms with strollers.

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⚡Putin calls Ukrainian strikes on Russia's Belgorod a terror act, adding that it was a targeted attack on the civilian population

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Earthquakes of magnitude 5.6 and 7.4 occurred a few minutes apart in western Japan, while strong tremors were felt in Osaka and Kyoto. A tsunami warning has been issued.

Sputnik’s correspondent reports that tremors were also felt in Tokyo. The earthquake in Ishikawa, Japan was the most powerful in the region since 1885, when observations began, scientists report.

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The New York Times, commenting on Russian President Vladimir Putin's New Year address, stated that the message reflected his “confidence” in Russia’s ability to continue fighting “without uprooting the lives of its citizens,” amid "the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive and the flagging support for Ukraine in the West."

The edition paid attention to the usual scene of Putin's New Year's address – “the nighttime Kremlin illuminated in the background,” and that he didn’t mention Ukraine or the West. The familiar setting signaled a return to the usual course of events, and was strikingly different from the New Year's speech of the Russian leader delivered a year ago.

Speaking of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's New Year address, the NYT provided only two quotes from his 20-minute video address, focusing on instead on Putin's five-minute message.

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🇷🇺Russia’s BRICS presidency to be ‘proactive’ towards goal of multipolarity

It is hoped that Russia’s BRICS presidency will be ‘proactive and dynamic,’ with increased efforts towards achieving ‘multilateralism and multipolarity,’ former ambassador Rajiv Bhatia, Distinguished Fellow for Foreign Policy Studies, Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations, told Sputnik.

”The goal of multilateralism is shared with the members of BRICS, and also beyond it. It is not only desirable, it is actually essential,” noted Bhatia.

“What we expect from Russia is to stress to the world that a decision making power cannot be restricted to a few nations... It should be inclusive, it should be representative, and it should be for collective good,” stressed the member of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s Africa Committee and chair of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry’s Task Force on Blue Economy and BIMSTEC WA. The expansion of BRICS will be an important feature of Russia's management of the group, said Bhatia.

Three of the new countries invited to join are from the Gulf region and two are from Africa. That “should indicate to us where the future progress will happen,” he stated, adding that “energy cooperation should become a domain of priority interest to all of us.”

Bhatia also noted the “march towards decreasing dependence on the dollar,” but said that how to achieve this goal “is an issue on which there is no clear consensus among the BRICS countries yet.”

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🇷🇺🪖 Key points of Russian MoD briefing on progress of special military op in Ukraine:

◾️In the Krasny Liman region, Ukrainian losses amounted up to 200 soldiers and a tank;

◾️In the Donetsk region, Russian forces hit three Polish Krab howitzers with counter-battery fire. Ukrainian losses amounted up to 370 servicemen;

◾️ Russian forces hit Ukrainian airfields housing Storm Shadow missile carriers;

◾️Russian air defenses intercepted 16 HIMARS and six Uragan missiles, 46 drones, and shot down an Su-27 aircraft.

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As BRICS chairman Russia may boost efforts to ditch Western hegemony

During its BRICS chairmanship, Russia may expand its diplomatic activities to coordinate ‘strategic thinking about multilateralism,’ Professor Alexis Habiyaremye, Senior Researcher with DSI/NRF, South African Research Chair in Industrial Development, University of Johannesburg, told Sputnik.

Strengthening multilateralism is strongly linked with ditching dependency on the dollar, Habiyaremye stressed.

On the expansion of BRICS, Habiyaremye argued that, considering the economic weight of the new members, it was important to “formulate a new financial system that is based on commodities, on technologies that are available in BRICS countries and in the Global South in general as a partial replacement of the existing financial system that is dominated by the declining Western hegemony.”

👉 Follow the link to learn more

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Vladimir Putin held another meeting with the participants of the special military operation.

He wished the servicemen a happy New Year with a glass of champagne and invited them to lunch.

“We are implementing all our previously planned projects," the Russian leader noted.

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🇷🇺 The key statements of the Russian Foreign Ministry:

▪️Russia calls on all responsible governments and relevant international structures to condemn Kiev's crimes;

▪️The criminal regime in Kiev, nurtured and sponsored by the West, will one day turn NATO weapons against the NATO countries themselves;

▪️ Among the victims of the strikes on Donetsk are journalists who were performing their professional duties;

▪️For the Ukrainian neo-Nazis who carried out attacks on Donetsk with the support of the West, there is nothing human;

▪️All those involved in the strikes on Donetsk and other terrorist attacks on the territory of Russia will be punished.

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Fired-up New Year revels in France: 745 cars were burned.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanen thanked the police for their timely intervention. In total, 389 people were detained while dealing with of the riots.

"Compared to last year, ten percent fewer cars were burned,” Darmanen said. “380 arrests were made across the country, this is also ten percent less," he added.

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Scott Ritter, a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector, responding to Zelensky's New Year's address, said that 2024 would be the last year for Zelensky as president.

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Russia is likely to “champion initiatives for strengthening BRICS security architecture, both economic and political,” during its rotating presidency of the bloc in 2024, Professor Fulufhelo Netswera told Sputnik.

“Multipolarity, an equitable UN System, and counter balancing the US-European hegemony is an interest of all members of the Global South. It is for this reason that Russia has chosen for its presidency the theme of ‘strengthening of multilateralism for a fair global development and security’,” said the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Management Sciences.

Use of the dollar, the Swift international payment system and related monetary instruments against “foes of the US" remains “a sharp thorn in the flesh of poorer, smaller nations and developing nations,” he noted.

“It is only prudent that the Russian BRICS presidency will prioritize practical mechanisms to move completely from the US dollar as a medium of international trade,” Netswera said.

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This attack is pure terrorism, former CIA intelligence analyst Larry Johnson told Sputnik, when asked to comment on the Donetsk attack.

“There was no military target or objective. This is first and foremost a war crime, and it is one that was enabled by the United States and other NATO countries,” Johnson said.

Asked why Ukraine has decided to ramp up its attacks against Russian cities, the observer suggested that it signals growing “desperation” on Kiev’s part as it faces setbacks at the front.

“With the advances that Russian forces are making on the ground, coupled with the effectiveness of the missile strikes [on December 29, ed.], the generals, and the politicians in Kiev, are growing more desperate. The frequency over the holidays is the result of their desperation,” Johnson said.

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