❗️Ukrainian losses in the Russian Kursk region during the day amounted to 400 militants, Russia's Defense Ministry announced.

Since the beginning of combat operations in the Kursk region, Ukrainian forces have lost more than 45,220 soldiers.

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🇷🇺🇸🇾 Syria has strategic interests with Russia, said the head of the new Syrian government, Ahmed al-Sharaa.

"Russia is the second most powerful state in the world. It is of great importance. Syria has strategic interests with Russia," he said.

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⚡️Three residents, including a doctor, were killed by gunfire from unidentified armed men traveling in a car near the city of Aleppo in northern Syria, Sputnik sources in Syria report.

In the city of Aleppo, seven civilians, including women, were abducted, the sources added.

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🇬🇪📹 Protesters who are trying to occupy a road and obstruct traffic are being detained near the Georgian parliament building on Rustaveli Avenue.

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Another aviation accident in the last 24 hours: a Boeing 737-800 made an emergency landing in Oslo, Norway
 
The KLM airline, which was heading to Amsterdam, had a hydraulic failure. During landing, the plane rolled off the runway onto the grass. The media reported that no one was injured, and passengers were evacuated.
 
Earlier, a Boeing 737 crashed in South Korea, killing 176 people. Also, an Air Canada plane made an emergency landing at Halifax Airport due to a broken landing gear.

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❗️The Azal plane was not shot down specifically over the territory of Russia, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev said

💬The plane was damaged due to "shelling from the ground", the president added.

💬Aliyev said that the Russian side should punish the perpetrators and pay compensation in connection with the crash of the AZAL plane near Aktau.

▫️Putin and Aliyev had a telephone conversation on Sunday, during which they continued discussing issues related to the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Earlier, Russia's President Vladimir Putin apologized for the tragic incident that occurred in Russian airspace and expressed his deep and sincere condolences to the families of the victims.

At the time the plane was preparing to land, Ukraine was carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure of Grozny in the Chechen Republic and Vladikavkaz in the Republic of North Ossetia using unmanned aerial vehicles, and Russian air defenses were repelling those attacks.

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❗️Both black boxes of the plane that crashed in South Korea have been found, the country's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has said.

At the moment, 177 people have been declared dead.

South Korean government has declared 7 days of national mourning until and inclusive of January 4 for the victims of the plane crash.

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Oreshnik and Russia’s nuclear doctrine update: Why they matter - Part 1 👉Part 2

Russia took two critical steps to bolster its defenses in 2024: updating its nuclear doctrine and test-firing the advanced Oreshnik missile.

Nuclear doctrine:

Russia’s updated nuclear doctrine aims to “put the West on notice,” Larry Johnson, retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official, tells Sputnik.

How it relates to Russia-West relations:

🟠Western countries “are creating a more dangerous situation and creating a direct threat to Russia, which is prepared to respond. That's the message Moscow is trying to send,” Johnson says, praising the Kremlin’s adherence to key agreements.

🟠“Russia has always signed these in good faith and abided by them, whether it was like the START Treaty or the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty or their Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty or the Minsk Agreement – Minsk 1 and Minsk 2,” the ex-CIA officer emphasizes.

🟠“It's always the West that's betraying those agreements," he notes, adding “at some point Russia will wake up and realize that this goes beyond a communication gulf.”

In November, President Vladimir Putin authorized the updated nuclear doctrine, detailing scenarios where nuclear weapons might be used, such as attacks with conventional weapons against Russia or Belarus that threaten sovereignty or territorial integrity.

Part 1 👉Part 2

#2024Overview

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Oreshnik and Russia’s nuclear doctrine update: Why they matter - Part 2 👉Part 1

Oreshnik strike:

“They don’t care. They think their continued allowance of Ukraine to launch Storm Shadow missiles into Russian territory and kill Russian citizens is just another message,” Larry Johnson, retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official, tells Sputnik.

Putin confirmed that Russia successfully test-fired the Oreshnik missile on November 21, striking a Ukrainian military facility in Dnepropetrovsk.

The strike was a response to Kiev using US- and UK-supplied missiles to hit facilities in Russia’s Kursk and Bryansk regions.

Part 2 👉Part 1

#2024Overview

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The bodies of all 179 dead from the plane that crashed in South Korea have been recovered - Yonhap

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‘Hardline critic of the West’: What’s to know about Georgia’s new president? Part 1👉Part 2

On December 29, Mikheil Kavelashvili was sworn in as Georgia’s new president in an inauguration at parliament that was attended by members of the ruling Georgian Dream party and its founder Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Who is Georgia’s new president?

Mikheil Kavelashvili’s record

🟠A former Dinamo Tbilisi and Manchester City football player, Kavelashvili was appointed president by the parliament during the December 14 elections, in which 224 out of 225 members of Georgia's electoral college voted for the only candidate on
the ballot.

🟠The 53-year-old is a founder of the People's Power party, allied with the Georgian Dream and known for being the main voice for anti-Western sentiments in Georgia. The Guardian recently called him “a pro-Russia, hardline critic of the West.”

🟠Kavelashvili has repeatedly said that Western intelligence agencies are seeking to drive Georgia into war with Russia.

🟠He accused opposition parties of acting as a "fifth column" directed from abroad, slamming outgoing President Salome Zourabichvili as a "chief agent". The new president accused her of violating the constitution and declared that he would "restore the presidency to its constitutional framework.”

🟠The footballer-turned-politician insisted that Georgian society is divided," and that “radicalization and polarization" in the country are being fueled from abroad. He pledged to do his best to unite the society “around the idea of Georgia’s identity and independence.”

Part 1👉Part 2

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‘Hardline critic of the West’: What’s to know about Georgia’s new president? Part 2 👉Part 1

How does the US meddle in internal affairs of the former Soviet republic?

🟠The US did not think twice before sanctioning Georgian Dream party’s founder Ivanishvili earlier this week for allegedly “undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia for the benefit of the Russian Federation,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken put it.

🟠In September, the US cited the aforementioned allegations as it slapped sanctions on Zviad Kharazishvili, head of the Department for Special Assignments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and his deputy Mileri Lagazauri. Georgian Dream spokesman Givi Mikanadze denounced the sanctions as “interference in the pre-election processes and an attempt to influence the will of voters.”

🟠The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), in turn, said in a statement in July that Moscow has data that indicates Washington’s determination to seek a change of power in Georgia following the results of the parliamentary elections in the small Caucasian nation on October 26, which was finally won by the Georgian Dream.

🟠According to the SVR, the US instructors have already given the command to the opposition forces in Georgia to start planning protests in the country timed to coincide with the elections.

🟠The October 26 elections saw Georgian Dream obtain 54.2% of the votes, with the four opposition parties together gaining 37.33% percent of the votes. The remaining political forces failed to overcome the 5% ceiling needed to make it to the parliament.

Part 2 👉Part 1

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🇷🇺💥ORESHNIK – NEW WORD THE WORLD HAS LEARNT IN 2024

Russia's new hypersonic missile, Oreshnik, equipped with an extremely powerful thermal warhead made headlines the moment Russian President Vladimir Putin presented it on November 21.

It’s time to learn Russian!

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2025 US military budget: Where's the money going?

The US defense spending for next year amounts to a record $895 billion. Joe Biden signed into law the defense bill on December 23.

It stipulates hefty sums for nuclear weapons and the Pacific region, East Asia and Taiwan, as Washington continues to ramp up nuclear tensions by taking new steps up the escalation ladder with Moscow and Beijing in Ukraine and over Taiwan, and occasionally waving around the nuclear button.

Take a look at Washington’s biggest defense spending plans in Sputnik's infographic.

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At least 17 people have been killed in a suspected Israeli drone attack on the outskirts of the Syrian capital of Damascus on Sunday, media reported.

An Israel drone hit the town of Adra, northeast of the capital, Sky News Arabia reported. Several others were injured.

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📹 Russia's Dnepr Battlegroup hit a Ukrainian Dana self-propelled artillery system that was concealed in a treeline near the town of Orekhov with Giatsint-B guns.

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Major winners and losers of halting Russian gas transit through Ukraine

As the Ukraine gas transit contract with Russia is set to end, Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK received its first delivery of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US on December 27.

✅ Winners

🇺🇸 US LNG producers:

The halting of Russia's gas deliveries through Ukraine will increase the US share and reduce competition in the EU market.

The latest US LNG delivery amounts to 100 million cubic meters of gas (1 TWh of energy, or 3,530,000 MMBtu), bought by D.Trading, DTEK’s pan-European trading subsidiary.

The shipment arrived at Greek LNG terminals such as Revithoussa, where it will be "re-gasified" and distributed "through EU and Ukrainian gas networks," according to DTEK.

One network, the Vertical Corridor, will transmit US LNG deliveries between Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

LNG from the US for Europe is at least 30-40% more expensive than pipeline gas from Russia.

In December 2022, the US became the world’s leading exporter of LNG amid Europe's energy crisis and the sabotage attack on Russia's Nord Stream pipelines.

❌ Losers

Ukraine: Ukraine will lose almost $1 billion annually from Russian gas transit fees. Additionally, Ukraine is likely to pay more for US LNG coming through the Revithoussa LNG terminal than for Russian pipeline gas, which used to come in the form of a "virtual reverse."

🇭🇺🇦🇹🇸🇰 Hungary, Austria, and Slovakia which have long relied on Russian gas transit through Ukraine, will face challenges. Being landlocked, access to LNG delivered to marine terminals is costly and difficult.

Long-term contracts with Russia's Gazprom allowed them to buy natural gas considerably cheaper than EU gas spot prices. For instance, Austria had been receiving Russian gas at a price almost three times cheaper than EU spot prices in 2022, according to Reuters.

🇪🇺 European Union: After sliding to $11.79/MMBtu in October, European gas prices rose to almost $15/MMBtu on November 22. On December 27, benchmark futures rose further by 5% on the news of halted Russian gas transit through Ukraine.

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