🗣Ukrainian military-industrial facilities are Russia's priority targets — Putin

"Russia's priority targets in Ukraine are military infrastructure, military industrial complex facilities and – possibly – decision-making centers," Russian President Vladimir Putin stated.

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❗️Putin on the killings of Darya Dugina and General Kirillov: our law enforcement and intelligence agencies missed these attacks; their work needs improvement.

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Russia embraces Ukrainians who share its culture, traditional values - Putin

There are millions of Ukrainians living in our country, President Putin noted, in a reference to the people now living in Russia’s new territories and in Crimea.

“We can only welcome this. Those are people of our culture. They are part of our people… There's no doubt about it,” Putin emphasized.

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❗️Ukrainian intelligence and army are accomplices of Kiev's illegitimate regime – Putin

The Zelensky regime has lost legitimacy in terms of the Ukrainian Constitution, which does not allow the extension of presidential powers without elections – even in the event of the martial law, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

"If the president loses legitimacy, the same happens down the ladder. So whatever they do, when they execute his orders, they become the accomplices in his illegitimate actions," Putin explained.

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❗️Telephone scammers have become a tool of the Kiev regime – Putin

Telephone fraud has been elevated to the level of state policy in Ukraine, and they have managed to steal over 250 billion rubles from Russians, Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed out.

"It is almost the scale of what Nazi Germany did. They simply printed money and spread it in order to undermine the economy of the UK. Almost the same thing is now happening in Ukraine," Putin said.

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💬 Russia owes economic miracle to West’s ‘sanctions on steroids’ approach: analyst

Russia has been able to survive and thrive despite being “the most sanctioned country in history” thanks to a series of timely decisions stimulating agriculture, tech and industrial import substitution, reorienting trade and ditching the dollar as a means of exchange, veteran financial analyst Paul Goncharoff told Sputnik, commenting on the economic figures listed off by President Putin at his year-end presser.

“The largely successful effort to develop good economic relations within BRICS became a priority, and the expansion of BRICS and the use of sovereign currencies outside of the US dollar and Euro illuminated the need and desire by many sovereign governments to get out of the ‘influence sphere’ of the G7, and their payments systems,” Goncharoff explained.

Ultimately, BRICS and other developing countries have jointly expressed dissatisfaction with the West’s carrot and stick approach to diplomacy, the observer noted. As for Moscow, “it became clear that the West had little to offer Russia that was truly needed, and the cost geopolitically and economically was simply too high.”

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Putin on peace talks with Ukraine: Russia can sign agreement only with someone who’s legitimate

Russia is ready to continue peace negotiations with Ukraine, even with Volodymyr Zelensky, if he were to go through an election campaign and reestablish his legitimacy, President Putin said at his year-end presser.

“Right now, if Ukraine truly wants to go for a peace settlement, they’re capable of doing that. They can organize this process whatever way they want, but we can sign an agreement only with someone who is legitimate,” Putin emphasized, hinting that with Zelensky’s cancelation of presidential elections earlier this year, representatives of Ukraine’s Rada parliament “are the only legitimate people” today in Moscow’s eyes.

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❗️Israel has turned out to be the main beneficiary of the events unfolding in Syria, where the government has changed, Putin said.

The Russian head of state said that he is unaware of Israel’s ultimate goals in the Gaza Strip, but castigated its actions as “simply reprehensible"

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Putin on General Kirillov’s murder: security services dropped the ball, such a thing cannot be allowed to happen again

Acts of terrorism like the attack which killed Russian NBC Protection Troops chief General Igor Kirillov have also been committed in the past against civilians, including journalists and civil leaders, President Putin said at his year-end press conference.

“These are terrorist acts perpetrated by the current regime in Kiev, and that means our law enforcement agencies as well as our special services are failing to stop these attacks. What can I say? We need to improve our work and make sure that such things never happen again,” Putin said.

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🇷🇺Google must comply with Russian law, Putin demands

The Silicon Valley-based tech giant, Google, needs to be in compliance with Russia’s legislation, stressed Vladimir Putin.

"They must avoid any form of wrongdoing," the Russian leader emphasized, underscoring that the Big Tech giant should not be misused as a tool of foreign policy against other governments or for political propaganda.

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Putin reveals ‘useful’ conversations he had with key Cold War-era world leader

“As for world leaders who have passed away, I had contacts…for quite a long time with Helmut Kohl, the former German chancellor,” President Putin said at his annual presser, answering a question about which now deceased world leaders he would like to sit down and have tea with.

“He was world-scale figure, not only due to the fact that he was a corpulent man, but also thanks to his beliefs,” Putin said, characterizing Kohl as a “real world leader” who did “a lot for his homeland.”

“After my very first meeting with him back in 1993, and for a long period of time after he no longer was chancellor, he sometimes, not quite frequently, but regularly came to visit me, and it was my distinct pleasure to talk to him,” Putin said, adding that he has “warm memories of many of our conversations. They were useful for me, and it is no exaggeration.”

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The Kiev regime persecutes Orthodox Church in Ukraine - Putin

The Kiev regime blatantly violates the rights of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and human rights of believers, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, adding the West turns a blind eye to these violations.

"I think that those who are doing that will face a boomerang effect," Putin noted.

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Russia’s invincible Oreshnik leaves West in the dust - Ex-Pentagon analyst

The West is in denial about Russia’s Oreshnik missile that defense systems are powerless to counter, Michael Maloof, former senior security policy analyst in the Pentagon, told Sputnik.

He pointed out that Russia's multi-warhead, nuclear-capable Oreshnik has left the United States far behind.

“The US not only does not have a hypersonic offensive system - it doesn't even have a defensive system that has any hope of stopping Oreshnik and the new class of missiles that are coming out,” the veteran analyst maintained.

While the US scrambles to be in the vanguard of such cutting-edge weapons systems, in effect it tends to “put all the bells and whistles on a system, overprice it and then fall behind,” said Maloof.

Washington is reluctant to acknowledge that both Russia and China have weapons systems that the US does not have, namely, hypersonic missiles.

The pundit speculated that if the United States had remained in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a missile like the Oreshnik might not exist today. He observed that Russia's clear demonstration of the missile's unmatched capabilities serves as "another way of Putin telling Trump to maybe reconsider."

“I think in order to lessen the threshold of war […] and this would be a good start and, at least, beginning with the United States and Russia. And the other countries can follow suit,” said Maloof, adding:

“It's something that the world needs to really focus in on, recognize, and deal with constructively.”

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