❗️Russian air defense systems shot down eight ATACMS missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

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🇷🇺🪖More statements from the Russian MoD daily briefing on the special military operation's progress:    

▪️Ukraine lost up to 440 militants, a tank, an infantry fighting vehicle and three armored personnel carriers in the Russian Tsentr Battlegroup's area of responsibility.

▪️Russian forces hit the infrastructure of Ukrainian military airfields, drone production workshops and drone storage depots.

▪️Russian air defence systems shot down 56 Ukrainian drones.

▪️Ukraine lost up to 250 militants and a Kozak armored fighting vehicle in the Russian Yug Battlegroup's combat zone.

▪️Ukraine lost up to 170 troops and two ammunition depots in the Russian Vostok Battlegroup's combat zone.

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🪖Mortal combat 2.0: Heroic Russian serviceman recounts hand-to-hand fight to the death with enemy Ukrainian

A valiant soldier from Yakutia in eastern Russia single-handedly took down several Ukrainian servicemen, and one of them in hand-to-hand combat to the death.

Andrey Grigoriev shared his experience of the deadly face-off in an interview with Russian media after a video of the incident recently went viral.
Grigoriev revealed that before the epic fight, caught on the enemy’s body cam, the Ukrainian had killed one of his friends in an exchange of fire.

"When we entered hand-to-hand combat, we both knew that one of us had to die," he said.

The Russian grabbed a sharp shard from the ground and stuck it in his opponent’s eye, forcing the Ukrainian to release the knife held against his neck.

“I took the knife and delivered the first blow to the back of his head,” Grigoriev recalled. Several blows later, the Ukrainian pleaded with him: ‘Let me say goodbye to the sky, my mother, you’ve already killed me…You are the best fighter in the world.’”

Grigoriev said he didn’t deliver the final blow, convinced that his enemy would not survive two knife wounds to the neck and three stabs near the heart.

“From childhood, we, Russians… Yakuts, are taught that in any situation you need to remain human,” he added.

Elon Musk’s reaction on X was to note that he also has a WWI trench knife embedded in his bedroom wall, “just in case,” adding that it is “more useful than a gun in close quarters.”

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❗️All 8 ATACMS missiles launched from Ukrainian territory on Friday for an attack were shot down by Russian S-400 and Pantsir-SM air defense systems, the Russian Ministry of Defense stated.

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🇷🇺 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will hold a news conference on January 14 on the results of Russia's diplomacy in 2024, the Russian Foreign Ministry said

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Damascus Airport will resume receiving and departing international flights starting from January 7

“We announce we will start receiving international flights to and from Damascus International Airport from” Tuesday, state news agency SANA says, quoting Ashhad al-Salibi, who heads the Civil Aviation and Air Transport Authority.

Previously the airport stopped receiving international flights amid political turmoil in Syria.

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🇮🇷🇷🇺 Iranian spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani stated in an interview with Sputnik:

"We hope that the comprehensive cooperation agreement between Iran and Russia will be signed on January 17."

"This follows various discussions and preparations for both the text of the agreement and during the Iranian president's visit to Kazan. We are expecting the Iranian president’s visit to Russia, where, as we hope, two issues agreed upon by both parties will be discussed: the North-South corridor and the plan for the transfer of Russian gas to Iran."

"Currently, we are working on the Astara-Rasht railway section. Since this is an important and serious project, the matter will be personally handled by the president or the first vice president."

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📹 CENTCOM releases footage of cruise missile attacks on Yemen

The footage, published Saturday on the US combatant command’s social media, shows guided missile destroyers operating somewhere in the Red Sea from the Harry Truman carrier strike group firing Tomahawk Land Attack cruise missiles.

CENTCOM says the attacks targeted Houthi command and control, weapon production and storage facilities, and took place on New Year’s Eve, December 31. Separately, the command reported scrambling Navy and Air Force jets to target a radar site and seven Houthi cruise missiles and drones over the Red Sea.

US operations against the Yemeni fighters have ramped up dramatically in recent weeks amid the militia’s increasingly precise ballistic missile attacks on Israel, which the Houthis are conducting in solidarity with Gaza.

Multiple Houthi missiles have penetrated Israel’s multilayered air defenses, some landing on target and others shot down only after entering Israeli airspace. The strikes, often coming in the dead of night, have caused dozens of injuries among Israelis scrambling for bomb shelters.

In the Red Sea, Houthi projectiles have forced the US strike group to retreat further and further from militia-controlled areas of Yemen to avoid damage.

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📹 The French military has released footage of its forces preparing to depart from the Republic of Chad in Central Africa. Paris' troops are set to complete their withdrawal by January 31.

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🪖On January 3, an attempt was made to launch a missile attack on the Belgorod region from the Ukrainian territory using American ATACMS missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.

During the missile defense engagement, all ATACMS missiles were intercepted and destroyed by S-400 combat units and the Pantsir-SM air defense missile gun system.

The Ministry of Defense emphasized that retaliatory measures will be taken in response to these actions by the Kyiv regime, which is supported by Western backers.

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🇷🇺 OHCHR unveils report criticizing the Kiev regime's actions against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Russia welcomes the recent report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) criticizing Kiev’s actions against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) and will continue to call on it and other organizations to push Kiev to repeal repressive laws against canonical Orthodoxy, Russian Ambassador-at-Large Gennady Askaldovich said.

The OHCHR report found in late December that Ukraine had failed to prove the necessity and proportionality of its actions aimed at dissolving religious organizations, including the UOC.

The UN's criticism of the Kiev authorities achieved its goal, as the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry rushed to call the report false and tried to "whitewash the conclusions that are unflattering for the Kiev regime" and shift responsibility to Russia, Askaldovich stressed.

On September 23, a law passed by the Verkhovna Rada and signed by Volodymyr Zelensky went into effect in Ukraine, allowing the UOC to be banned over its historical links to the Moscow Patriarchate.

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⚔️Germany’s Chancellor feigns ‘cool’ amid head-butting with Elon Musk

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has dismissed the “erratic statements of a billionaire from the US” targeting the policies of parties like his Social Democratic Party (SPD) as par for the course.

“It’s nothing new when it comes down to it. You have to stay cool,” he told Stern magazine. He added that “Musk can say what he likes… Germany is governed by the will of its citizens.”

In a timeline of the recent verbal vitriol:

🔊The Tesla CEO urged Scholz to “resign immediately" in a post on X, responding to a deadly attack at a German Christmas market in December, adding: "Incompetent fool."

🔊Musk referred to Frank-Walter Steinmeier as an "undemocratic tyrant" after Germany's federal president explicitly mentioned the social media platform X (owned by Musk) when warning of “external influences” on the upcoming snap elections.

🔊The key advisor to US President-elect Donald Trump offered a public endorsement of the right-wing Alternative for Germany on X and in an op-ed for Welt am Sonntag, saying the AfD is “the last spark of hope for this country.”

🔊Scholz took a veiled swipe at Musk in his New Year’s address, saying Germany’s future “will not be decided by the owners of social media channels.”

🔊Musk predicted that Scholz would not win the upcoming elections in a post on X, referring to Scholz with a derogatory misspelling, stating, "Chancellor Oaf Schitz or whatever his name is will lose."

🔊The billionaire is expected to hold a live talk with AfD leader Alice Weidel on X Spaces on January 9.

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❗️Ukrainian losses in the Russian Kursk region during the day amounted to 540 militants and four tanks, Russia's Defense Ministry announced.

Since the beginning of combat operations in the Kursk region, Ukrainian forces have lost more than 47810 soldiers.

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💸 US CEOs donating millions to Trump's inauguration after snubbing his campaign

Silicon Valley CEOs and other business executives are contributing significant sums to US president-elect Donald Trump's inauguration, despite some of them having previously snubbed him during the election.

🔸 Apple CEO Tim Cook will personally donate $1 million to Trump's inaugural committee, with Amazon, Meta and OpenAI also pledging $1 million each in late December, according to Axios.

🔸 During the 2024 election year, Apple, Amazon and Meta openly supported Trump's Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, with each contributing around $2 million to her campaign, while their donations to Trump were minimal, as reported by OpenSecrets.

🔸 The companies appeared to switch sides following Trump's victory in November. That same month, The Wall Street Journal praised Apple CEO Tim Cook for his willingness to work with the unpredictable president-elect.

🔸 Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in November. Facebook whistleblower Ryan Hartwig described that in an interview with Sputnik as "an attempt to curry favor" with the incoming administration.

🔸 Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was spotted dining late with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in December.

🔸 Trump’s inauguration is also being funded by major corporations, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and cryptocurrency exchanges Kraken and Coinbase. Toyota, Ford and General Motors each pledged around $1 million, Axios said.

🔸 Other companies contributing seven-figure sums include AT&T, Charter Communications, Stanley Black & Decker, Intuit, Pratt Industries and pharmaceutical trade group PhRMA, The Wall Street Journal reported.

🔸 US media suggest that Trump's inauguration could raise significantly more money than President Joe Biden's inauguration in 2021.

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Stating the obvious: Blinken admits US was pumping Ukraine with weapons long before conflict with Russia escalated

The US began pumping Ukraine with weapons long before the conflict escalated in February 2022, outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken has admitted at the end of his tenure.

“We made sure that […] starting in September and then again December, we quietly got a lot of weapons to Ukraine to make sure that they had in hand what they needed… things like Stingers, Javelins,” said Blinken in an interview for The New York Times.

The statement can hardly qualify as a “revelation,” considering that it has long been obvious that Western leaders who signed the Minsk agreements on Ukraine in 2014 never intended to honor them.

In 2022 former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and ex-French President Francois Hollande admitted that the Minsk Agreements, legally constituted by a decision of the UN Security Council, were seen by the West as an opportunity to train the Ukrainian Army and flood the Kiev regime with weapons.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, commenting on the deceitfulness of this betrayal, noted in December 2022: “We thought we would still be able to agree within the framework of the Minsk peace agreements... Of course, now the question of trust arises… And trust, of course, is almost at zero."

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🇨🇳 China started annual military exercises for 2025

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Just business: US military-industrial complex wants Ukraine bloodbath to continue even if it means drafting 18-year-olds Part 1 👉 Part 2

“The war in Ukraine is profitable to the United States economically, politically and so on. That’s why they’re interested in this war continuing,” retired Russian Army colonel and renowned military observer Viktor Litovkin told Sputnik, commenting on the Biden administration’s steady pressure on Kiev to reduce the draft age to 18.

Besides the cash the US military-industrial complex can expect from new contracts from its Eastern European NATO allies from the “recycling” of Soviet-era equipment, and the replenishment of Pentagon warehouses after sending old stocks off to Kiev, hawks in Washington are able to pursue their long-term agenda of “weakening Russia,” Litovkin explained.

The gruesome “business” in Ukraine is so profitable that Litovkin doesn’t expect it to stop once Donald Trump is in charge. After all, he recalled, it was Trump who first sent lethal weapons to the country.

“I’m more than certain that Trump will not rush to stop this ‘business’. He will likely simply dump part of it onto Europe, while continuing the rest because it’s profitable for the US. Trump has always been on the side of the US military-industrial complex,” Litovkin said.

As for the drafting of 18-year-olds, “someone has to man the frontlines and the trenches” if the reserve of 25-year-olds and up (the current draft age) has been exhausted, the retired colonel said. “How can this conflict continue if a million Ukrainian servicemen have already been knocked out, killed, wounded, maimed and so on? Some people have fled to Europe, to Russia and so on.”

Unfortunately, Litovkin doesn’t expect Ukraine’s population to rise up and overthrow the regime sending its sons to their deaths, either. “Power in Ukraine is in the hands of the Banderites, who keep the people who are left in fear…Maybe individuals and groups can declare a protest, but they will be immediately thrown in jail and the men sent to the front,” he said.

👉 Part 2

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