Eastern Europe is preparing for new waves of Ukrainian refugees, according to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).

Eastern European countries bordering Ukraine are preparing to receive new waves of refugees who don’t want to fight, the SVR said.

According to the intelligence service, Eastern European nations believe that residents of the areas controlled by Kiev will be ready to do anything to "escape the clutches of the Ukrainian ruling regime, which sold their lives for a pittance to the overseas masters."

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

The new Syrian authorities are sending signals that they are interested in Russia's continued presence, although there are no specifics yet, Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vassily Nebenzia said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🔥 Welcome to the collection: US-made MaxxPro armored personnel carrier captured by Russian forces

Russia’s Vega special forces unit captured a Ukrainian International MaxxPro armored personnel carrier and a Kozak combat armored vehicle near the town of Krasnoarmeysk.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📹 Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has thwarted an attempt by a Ukrainian special services agent to carry out a terrorist attack in the Zaporozhye region.

The Ukrainian citizen preparing the terrorist attack was wanted "for committing particularly serious crimes, including attempted murder of a law enforcement officer," the FSB said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

‘Threat from within’: FBI’s take on New Year’s violence overlooks US army trace, fmr CIA analyst says

“These were two US citizens, both,” and both Army-linked, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson told Sputnik, commenting on the media’s initial push to tie the New Year’s Day massacre in New Orleans to illegal immigration, and the FBI’s “curious and ironic” push to link the suspect to ISIS.*

“One [the New Orleans attacker] is a former member of the US Army. The other [the Las Vegas Cybertruck blast suspect] is a current active-duty member of the US Army. So it is not an of threat from outside. It's a threat from within,” Johnson emphasized.

*A terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📹 German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, accompanied by her delegation, arrived in Damascus dressed in body armor.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

New Year’s Day violence may have been designed to sow chaos ahead of Trump’s inauguration - Larry Johnson

“I can't rule out the possibility that this individual was acting as part of a broader effort to create chaos and instability in the United States prior to the inauguration of Donald Trump in order to prevent Trump from being inaugurated,” former CIA analyst Larry Johnson told Sputnik, commenting on the twin violent incidents that rocked New Orleans and Las Vegas on New Year’s Day.

Trump, Johnson pointed out, “is seen as an existential threat – a potential existential threat to organizations like the FBI, the CIA” and the Justice Department.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Russian Defense Ministry briefing on the weekly progress of the special military operation in Ukraine

🔸 The Russian Armed Forces launched a massive series of 12 strikes using precision-guided weapons and attack drones, targeting energy infrastructure that supported Ukraine's defense industry, a plant producing artillery powder charges, military airfield infrastructure, ammunition depots, drone assembly workshops and mercenary deployment locations.

🔸 Ukraine lost up to 12,455 militants. Seventeen Ukrainian tanks were destroyed, including three German-made Leopard tanks. 46 Ukrainian militants were captured at the front line. 559 drones were shot down, and the Russian Black Sea Fleet destroyed 11 unmanned boats.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Former CIA vet on Vegas Cybertruck blast: ‘What contacts did he have with Ukrainian intelligence?’

The suspect blown up outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day was an active-duty Green Beret officer with an apparent penchant for Ukraine. That’s an angle worth exploring instead of being swept under the rug by the media and the FBI, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson says.

“It appears there have been social media pictures identifying him in [a] Slava Ukraini* [T-shirt]. So he was a big pro-Ukrainian guy,” Johnson told Sputnik.

“I’d want to find out what if the individual driving that Cybertruck was ever in Ukraine? What contacts did he have with Ukrainian intelligence services?”

The incident definitely could have a Ukrainian intel trace, Johnson emphasized. With the symbolism of the Trump Tower meaning “they recognize Donald Trump is going to potentially bring an end to this war.”

* ‘Glory to Ukraine’ – a slogan associated with Ukraine’s WWII-era Nazi collaborators and modern-day Ukrainian nationalists.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

The FBI and US Department of Homeland Security have warned of the potential threat of new attacks in the country by "copycats" of the attack in New Orleans, where a car drove into a crowd, ABC News reports, citing sources.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇰🇿 Kazakhstan needs a nuclear power plant (NPP), and it is possible the country will also build a second and third station, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said in an interview with the local newspaper Ana Tili

▪️Tokayev is convinced that Kazakhstan needs a high-power NPP. He did not rule out that in the near future Kazakhstan would begin building a second, and possibly third nuclear power plant;

▪️The nuclear industry will give a powerful impetus to the development of Kazakhstan, which is experiencing an energy deficit. Tokayev believes Kazakhstan should become a country with developed nuclear energy, adding that it has a great future;

▪️ Kazakhstan’s president noted that the issue was discussed with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during his visit to Astana. The leaders agreed that the Kazakh side as the customer in the project would act as a general operator in the consortium. The discussion was about the possible participation of Russia’s Rosatom State Corporation, which has high competence and extensive experience in building nuclear power plants abroad;

▪️Tokayev said negotiations are also underway with a Chinese company, given China's great success in building civilian nuclear facilities. There is also interest from other foreign corporations, including Western ones.

A national referendum on the construction of the country's first nuclear power plant was held in Kazakhstan on October 6. According to the country’s Central Election Commission, 71.12% of voters supported the project.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Hundreds of soldiers from French-trained Ukrainian brigade went AWOL before firing a single shot

Over 1,700 soldiers from Ukraine’s newly formed 155th Mechanized Brigade, trained and outfitted with great fanfare in France, deserted before reaching the battlefront, according to Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov.

▪️French President Emmanuel Macron proudly announced the “elite” project alongside Volodymyr Zelensky last June. The brigade was meant to have more than 5,800 troops and be equipped with Leopard tanks and French CAESAR 155 mm howitzers. However, at least 50 members of the unit, also known as “Anne of Kiev,” went AWOL already during drills in France, Butusov wrote on social media.

▪️When the brigade was finally packed off to the front line near Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk), it did not even have any drones.

“As a result, the brand-new Leopard 2A4 tanks and VAB armored vehicles suffered losses during the first attempts to use them,” according to Butusov, who added:

“The brigade’s servicemen became hostages of Zelensky’s PR project, which the authorities made no effort to actually implement competently.”

▪️Remnants of the brigade have reportedly been reassigned to other units, with Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) confirming to a French news agency that it had opened a criminal case on the circumstances of the formation of the 155th Mechanized Brigade. The case is being investigated under “articles on abuse of authority and desertion,” Communications Adviser to the SBI Tаtiana Sapyan said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

What’s in store for Syria in 2025?

The US and its regional allies “masterminded” the Syrian rebel offensive, which began November 27 and quickly turned into a route, taking “advantage of the fact that Syria was a weak state,” veteran Middle East politics expert Ali Rizk told Sputnik in a detailed breakdown of arguably the most consequential event of 2024 for the region – the collapse of the Assad government in Syria.

Syria became a “weak and fragile state” in the course of a long civil war, and was “further weakened” amid recent “Israeli wars in the region, particularly against Hezbollah,” which forced the Lebanese militia to withdraw its fighters, Rizk explained.

Cacophony of interests

All foreign actors involved in the Syrian crisis “agreed when it came to getting rid of former President Bashar Assad,” but beyond that, “when it comes to what comes next I think that they don’t agree,” the observer said, warning that this could provoke strife in the months and years to come.

🔸 Israel’s aims are “about cutting off the logistical supply line linking Iran to Hezbollah and diminishing Iran’s influence” in Syria in general.

🔸 Turkiye sees the situation “as a way to retain or return to the glory days of the Ottoman Empire” and advance its goal of blocking greater autonomy for the Kurds, Rizk said.

The US, besides its long-running efforts to turn Syria into a failed state by occupying key energy and food-producing areas, seeks, at least officially, to prevent ISIS’s* resurgence, while walking lockstep with Israel on Iran.

What’s in store for 2025?

1️⃣Syria shatters on ethnic and religious grounds, with ISIS taking advantage of the chaos, Israel grabbing additional territories for itself, and Turkiye aiding allies in a conflict with the Kurds.

2️⃣“A Taliban**-like regime in Syria, i.e. a Salafi jihadi takeover” – possible if hardline elements in HTS get their way.

3️⃣A unified Syria aligned to Turkiye, at peace with Israel and anti-Iran.

* Terrorist group outlawed in Russia.
** An organization under UN sanctions for terrorist activities

#2024Overview

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📹 Russian drone operators destroyed a Ukrainian infantry fighting vehicle that, under cover of a tank, was trying to deliver assault group personnel to counterattack lost positions.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

British government makes sick and disabled wait three more years before finding out their fate

Ministers will launch an independent commission to reform adult social care – but the final report will not be released until 2028.

"The government has told elderly & disabled people to wait until 2028 to hear its plan for social care," former Labour leader and now independent MP Jeremy Corbyn posted on X.

“What about those who are suffering here and now? We don’t need a commission to know what to do: end austerity, reverse privatisation and build a National Care Service for all."

The newly-elected Labour government abolished £1.5 billion-worth ($1.9 billion) of winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners in England and Wales in September as part of its austerity drive.

A 2017 study by Labour claimed that scrapping the payments could "kill" as many as 4,000 pensioners. British charity Age UK said a whopping 2 million elderly Britons could be affected by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's cuts.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt