🚨🇷🇺💥 RUSSIAN MOD UPDATE: HUGE GAINS AND DEVASTATING UKRAINIAN LOSSES

⚡️ In response to Ukrainian terrorist attacks, the Russian Armed Forces conducted strikes with long-range attack UAVs and high-precision weapons, including Kinzhal hyperesonic missiles, targeting defence and energy infrastructure used to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces

🟠 Russian forces continue clearing the settlements of Dimitrov and Grishino located north-east and north-west to Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) from remaining Ukrainian militants

🟠 Russian air and missile forces struck port infrastructure used to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces, arms storage sites, as well as temporary deployment points of Ukrainian troops and mercenaries in 142 areas

🟠 Air defense superiority: two HIMARS missiles and 169 UAVs were shot down by Russian air defense systems over the past 24 hours

🟠 Ukrainian losses: around 1,355 troops killed or wounded

Read about origins of Russia's special military op HERE

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🇺🇸 US eyes giving NATO Article 5-style security guarantee to Ukraine – reports

💬 "We want to give the Ukrainians a security guarantee that will not be a blank check on the one hand but will be strong enough on the other hand. We are willing to send it to Congress to vote on it," Axios cited a US official as saying.

There could be three separate agreements on peace, security guarantees, and reconstruction regarding Ukraine, according to the official.

👉 US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are due to meet Zelensky in Berlin on Monday to discuss progress on Trump’s peace deal on Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov previously recalled that Moscow is ready to discuss security guarantees by taking into account interests of all parties and to achieve a balance of these interests on a collective basis that reflects current realities.

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🇺🇸🇸🇾 US-Syrian military patrol comes under fire in central Syria

Two Syrian security personnel and several US servicemen were injured after an unknown gunman opened fire on them as they jointly patrolled the city of Palmyra, SANA reports.

▫️ The shooter was killed, while all those wounded were rushed to the Al-Tanf military base.

The incident is being investigated.

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🪖🇺🇸 US in desperate drone dash: Racing to close gap in small-drone warfare dominance

American military drone capabilities remain “far-removed from today’s front lines,” despite the boost US drone warfare got after the 9/11 attacks, Bloomberg reports.

US specialists are experimenting with cheap, hand-held drones as America desperately tries “to catch up in small-drone warfare,” the outlet says.

Earlier, the Pentagon announced that it would put $1B into purchasing more than 200,000 small attack drones over the next two years.

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🇷🇺🇪🇺 Russia vows swift response to EU asset freeze

"Our response will not take long," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. "A detailed statement on this issue was published by the Bank of Russia on December 12. Specific steps are already being implemented."

🔊 She called the EU policy illogical, adding that the move has further harmed the bloc’s economy.

Earlier this week, European Commission foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that EU states had frozen Russian assets amounting to $247 billion.

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🗣 Zelensky’s ‘elections’ gambit designed to muddy the waters of Trump’s peace push - analyst

🔊 “It’s obvious that he’s trying to evade Trump’s demands to sign an agreement by December 25 ceding certain territories and agreeing to the proposals in Trump’s plan,” military analyst Viktor Litovkin told Sputnik, commenting on Zelensky’s conditional agreement to elections after criticism from Trump.

“Holding presidential elections requires a decision by the Verkhovna Rada [parliament, ed.], a preparatory period, and so on. This, as Zelensky himself says, would require 90-150 days,” Litovkin pointed out.

👉 On top of that, Zelensky’s demands for a ceasefire during the vote are an absolute non-starter for Russia, the observer said.

“Russia has stated that we will cease fire on one condition: if he withdraws his troops from the territories enshrined in Russia’s constitution, including Zaporozhye and Kherson, which he categorically refuses to do. This means there will be no elections and no ceasefire,” Litovkin explained.

Litovkin recalled that Russia already agreed to a ceasefire once, when, during the Istanbul negotiations in 2022, “the Ukrainian side demanded that we withdraw our troops from Ukrainian territory because ‘agreements aren’t signed with a gun to your head’. We did so, and they immediately decided to continue hostilities.”
Giving this history, Litovkin sees Zelensky’s latest schemes as “the tricks of a petty crook that Russia will never agree to.”

As for Zelensky’s proposals for a referendum in the conflict area, that too is a no-go for Moscow, Litovkin says, because Russia has already held referendums in the regions, and people voted to join Russia.

💬 “Behind all these ideas lies only one thing: they want to turn their defeat on the battlefield into victory in the diplomatic arena,” the observer emphasized. “Trump already told Zelensky the first time he was at the White House that he doesn’t have any trump cards. They’re in Russia’s hands,” the observer summed up.

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