🎥🎥 Putin holds extended meeting with Ministry of Defense

👉 Watch the livestream here or follow the link to the Sputnik's website

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

⚡️In 2024 Russia liberated 189 settlements as part of its special operation, President Vladimir Putin stated during an expanded meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry board.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Russia will lift its self-imposed restrictions on deploying intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles if the United States begins deploying such systems, Putin said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️The number of modern weapons in Russia's strategic nuclear forces has reached 95%, Putin said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣Putin: West continue their attempts to retain their global dominance

“They wage hybrid warfare and pursue containment policies, including against Russia. They have set the goal of inflicting strategic defeat on Russia and continuing to provide the illegitimate regime in Kiev with weapons and money, sending their mercenaries and military advisors, thus promoting a continued conflict,” the Russian president said at the Defense Ministry meeting.

He also added that Western countries see themselves as “representatives of God in the world, even though they do not believe themselves”

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️The Russian military now advances an average of 30 square kilometres a day, Russian Defense Minister Belousov said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️The losses of the Ukrainian armed forces in 2024 exceeded 560,000 servicemen killed and wounded, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said. The total since the beginning of the war is almost a million people.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣Russian forces have the strategic upper hand on the line of contact – Putin

More key statements by the Russian president on the US, NATO and the collective West to the Russian Defence Ministry meeting:

🔸 NATO countries are ramping up their military expenditures, while troop strike groups are gathering along Russia's borders.

🔸 NATO is increasing its presence in the Asia-Pacific region, practising the deployment of missile systems.

🔸 Russia will respond comprehensively to the risks associated with possible US missile deployments in the Asia-Pacific region.

🔸 The US and the West continue to try to impose their rules on the rest of the world and have not abandoned their attempts to maintain dominance.

🔸 The US continues to pump arms and money into Ukraine.

🔸 The US shrugs off all rules, and wages hybrid wars against 'undesirable' states, including Russia.

🔸 New military-political alliances are being formed in the world at the behest of the US.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️In line with Putin's directives, Belousov proposed establishing a new military branch specializing in unmanned systems.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

⚡️📹 Watch the full speech of the Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Defense Ministry meeting.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov warned that the US missile defence base in Redzikowo in Poland, 165 kilometres from the Russian border, will be able to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles.

He also noted that the US will soon deploy intermediate-range missiles in Germany, which will be able to reach Moscow in eight minutes.

Belousov stressed that the experience of building an air defence system around Moscow should be used as a model for other regions.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣Russian forces shot down 86 Storm Shadow and Scalp cruise missiles, 215 ATACMS ballistic missiles, 1,629 HIMARS rocket shells, and over 27,000 fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles this year, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣The situation on the battlefield will not change, even if Ukraine lowers the mobilization age to 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated during the Defense Ministry board meeting.

"I believe that lowering the mobilization age to 18 would already be a crime. Reducing it to 14, as was done in Hitler’s Germany with the creation of the Hitler Youth, would be another crime. It’s clear to everyone that this won’t alter the battlefield situation," Putin remarked.

He accused Kiev regime of acting under the orders of those whose interests it serves.

"Under their guidance, Kiev will go as far as lowering the mobilization age to 18 and sending boys to die," Putin said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad quashed rumors about his decisions during the armed overthrow of the Syrian Arab Republic this month.

▫️Assad clarified in a statement that he never planned to resign or seek asylum, even as armed opposition forces gained ground.

▫️He stressed that staying in the country after "terrorists" seized power would have been pointless.

▫️Assad revealed that he learnt of the fall of Damascus after he had relocated to Hmeymim Airbase, used by Russian forces.

▫️Following instructions from Russian officials, he was evacuated from Hmeymim to a Russian base.

▫️Assad explained that he left his country after the collapse of the Syrian Arab Army and the paralysis of state institutions, but insisted that he did not abandon his people or the armed forces.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🤿 Diving into marriage: underwater wedding in Moscow

The Moscow oceanarium made history by hosting its first underwater wedding.

Their love is so deep, it literally needs scuba gear!

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📹Breaking records at Helicopter Pilot Day

Two Mi-8MTV-1 “Killer Whale” helicopters, named for their black-and-white livery and built by Rostec’s Kazan Helicopter Plant, are flying across Siberia to their service base.

On Helicopter Pilot Day, celebrated in Russia on the second Saturday of December, they set a 1,900 km distance record.

Video by Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Ukrainian Foreign Minister, in the presence of EU ministers, rejected Hungary's proposal for a Christmas ceasefire, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said.

He added that no one at the EU Foreign Affairs Council supported Hungary's initiative for a Christmas truce in Ukraine.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt