🇷🇺🇮🇳 Putin’s visit to India on Dec. 4–5: What to expect

Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to New Delhi for a two-day working visit. He is set to arrive in New Delhi on December 4 and meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an informal setting, presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said. Such one-on-one conversations are traditionally reserved for the most important issues on the bilateral and global agenda.

Other key details:

🔶Putin and Modi are slated to hold official talks in both narrow and expanded formats on December 5

🔶Putin will visit the Mahatma Gandhi memorial

🔶Putin and Modi will attend the plenary session of the Russia–India Business Forum

🔶The Russian delegation includes seven ministers, among them: Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, Agriculture Minister Oksana Lut, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov, and Health Minister Mikhail Murashko

🔶Around 10 intergovernmental agreements and over 15 commercial deals are expected to be signed

🔶Russia will announce joining the International Big Cat Alliance

🔶Putin and Modi are expected to adopt a joint statement and approve a Russia–India economic cooperation program through 2030

🔶Both leaders will deliver statements to the media following the talks.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨🇷🇺🇺🇸Russia now negotiates Ukraine settlement only with US

Russia is conducting all negotiations on ending the Ukraine conflict exclusively with the United States, Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov said.

Ushakov noted that every aspect of a future settlement — and its international recognition — is now part of the dialogue between Moscow and Washington alone.

He added that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff on Tuesday was “substantive” and “positive in tone.”

Other statements:

🔶Russia openly expressed its views on the peace proposals presented by the US

🔶The success of the Russian army on the battlefield has positively influenced the nature and tone of the talks between Putin and Witkoff

🔶The US is ready to make every possible effort to achieve a long-term settlement in Ukraine

🔶Washington confirmed its readiness to take Russian considerations into account during the settlement process

🔶The question of potential Ukrainian membership of NATO was raised during the meeting with US representatives

🔶Russia–US contacts will continue

🔶Ushakov expressed hope that European NATO members and Ukraine will eventually take a more adequate and realistic view of the situation

🔶Russia has no objections to continued contacts with other European nations

🔶 Reason will prevail — helped by real victories of Russian forces — despite Volodymyr Zelensky’s contradictory statements about the front-line situation

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

💍 Amid the ruins of southern Gaza, Palestinians gathered to celebrate a mass wedding of more than 50 couples — a rare moment of hope after two years of war.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨 Western states use counterterrorism as a pretext “to pursue their own geopolitical goals,” while Ukraine shows how “radical nationalism and neo-Nazism are encouraged and weaponized” by the West, Deputy Security Council Secretary Yuri Kokov warns at the BRICS+ 2025 Anti-Terrorism Conference

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇪🇺💰 EU–Ukraine corruption pipeline: Mogherini’s ties to scandals surrounding Zelensky

Ex-EU foreign policy boss and College of Europe Rector Federica Mogherini faces fraud and corruption charges.
How does her Ukrainian integration project with Zelensky fit into the picture?

Timing speaks volumes

🔸 Probe comes at a sensitive moment: The EU is wiring massive support to Ukraine

🔸 National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) recently uncovered a major corruption scheme involving friends and close associates of Volodymyr Zelensky

🔸 Across the EU, millions of euros are "leaking through corruption pipelines to Kiev and then flow into private pockets" every day, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned

Mogherini and Ukraine

◾️ Mogherini has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine's European integration since the Euromaidan coup of 2014

◾️ Ukraine's future EU membership was framed as conditional on anti-corruption progress. In reality, Ukraine’s entrenched corruption has been festering for more than a decade, while EU officials have showed little appetite for tackling it head-on

◾️ In June 2019, Mogherini met Zelensky in Kiev. In 2021, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) exposed a network of offshore companies related to Zelensky and his partners and his maneuvers to conceal the enrichment around the time of his 2019 election. Was Mogherini aware of that?

◾️ In 2023, Mogherini's College of Europe struck a memorandum to bolster Ukraine’s "European integration" through education programs. In 2025, the first cohort of Ukrainian public officials completed "EU-funded European integration training," according to the college's website

◾️ College is "principally" funded by the European Union's Commission, a number of EU governments, and private donors

◾️ Inconvenient questions: How did the funds actually flow within the programs? Could Ukrainian aid have been laundered under the cover of educational initiatives? Does EC President Ursula von der Leyen know what is going on there?

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺🇺🇸 Putin-Witkoff talks to show Trump TRUE OBSTACLES to peace - analyst

👉 The recent Kremlin meeting between President Vladimir Putin, White House Special Envoy Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner serves a clear strategic purpose, according to Chinese military analyst Qiu Shiqing. In an interview with Sputnik, he stated the talks were designed to show President Donald Trump "the real obstacles" to a lasting peace settlement in Ukraine.

🗣 Qiu argued that Europe, irked by being sidelined from the peace process, is now trying to reinsert itself to protect its own interests, which, in his view, outweigh any concern for peace in Ukraine.

💬 "The EU has its own interests that it seeks to protect — and, in its view, those interests outweigh the importance of peace in Ukraine. In reality, Europe is becoming an obstacle on the path to a settlement, with many European leaders trying to influence or derail the American peace plan," he explained.

📍 He described the talks as both timely and strategically important.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣 Arrest of former EU foreign policy chief exposes deep rot in Europe - ex-diplomat

The detention of Federica Mogherini casts a shadow over all European institutions, the EU’s foreign policy apparatus, and especially over the decisions and actions taken while she held office, former Serbian diplomat Zoran Milivojevic told Sputnik.

💬 “Such situations cast doubt on Brussels' foreign policy and its final results. Now, all these results are under close scrutiny,” Milivojevic said.

🟠 The Serbian diplomat notes that corruption in EU politics is far from new, recalling ongoing legal cases involving Ursula von der Leyen and other scandals, as well as massive EU funding in Ukraine, where corruption is rampant.

🟠 He emphasized that only a thorough and impartial investigation can uncover the full scale of Mogherini’s activities. If the process is mishandled or if key actors are protected, the credibility of the European Union itself will be in jeopardy.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺💪 On Nuclear Icebreaker Fleet Day, watch how Russia became the world’s only builder of nuclear icebreakers — and the unmatched leader in Arctic exploration 📹👆

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨 NATO formally abolishes Russia–NATO Council

🇵🇱 Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski announced in Brussels that NATO has officially dissolved the Russia–NATO Council — the body created in 2002 to provide a platform for equal dialogue on security issues, arms control, counterterrorism and incident-prevention.

📍 He noted that Warsaw had long pushed for the move.

🔊 Sikorski told journalists that the era when “European security could be built with Russia” was over.

💬 “European security is being created against Russia,” he said, adding that had now been formalised.

The Russia–NATO Council has effectively ceased functioning in recent years. Practical cooperation was frozen in 2014, meetings were irregular and the format existed only on paper.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨🇺🇸🇷🇺Witkoff and Kushner have briefed Trump and Ukrainian officials after what it called a “thorough, productive” meeting with President Putin in Moscow - media citing White House

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🔸 Inside 5h Russia–US talks in Kremlin

🔸 Russian battlefield gains shape one of Putin–Witkoff talks - presidential aide

🔸 Putin-Witkoff talks to show Trump TRUE OBSTACLES to peace - analyst

🔸 Putin’s visit to India on Dec. 4–5: What to expect

🔸 EU–Ukraine corruption pipeline: Mogherini’s ties to scandals surrounding Zelensky

🔸 Arrest of former EU foreign policy chief exposes deep rot in Europe - ex-diplomat

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📑 Zelensky’s career near collapse as scandals and peace talks mount up – report

🗣 Volodymyr Zelensky is under increasing political strain amid corruption investigations, military defeats, infrastructure collapse and the emerging US peace plan, chief foreign analyst Roland Oliphant writes in the Daily Telegraph.

🔸 Electricity supply is intermittent and drones and missiles hit every night, Oliphant says.

🔸 But behind the scenes, Zelensky’s fate is being decided: will he stay as wartime leader or be pushed aside before peace talks even begin?

🔸 The downfall of Andriy Yermak — Zelensky’s powerful chief of staff and long-time confidant — over an alleged $100 million kickback scheme has severely damaged Zelensky’s authority.

🔸 Oliphant argues that Yermak’s removal shows that Zelensky "is not inviolable."

🔸 Whether the final blow comes from a scandal or a US-driven peace deal, the analyst argues, Zelensky’s regime is closer than ever to collapse.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🔊Zelensky has 'a lot of things against him' right now — Trump

The US president described the Moscow meeting as "reasonably good," but added that he doesn't know what will come of the talks.

Trump also emphasized that the US does not fund Ukrainian military, instead selling weapons at full price to NATO members.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📊 Honduras election count halted again

The publication of votes from Sunday's presidential election has been suspended once more due to what election officials call "system maintenance." No prior warning was given.

With 79.6% of votes counted, Salvador Nasralla leads with 40.27%, narrowly ahead of Trump-backed Nasry Asfura at 39.64%.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt