🇷🇺🤝🇧🇾 Putin: Russian-Belarusian security and defense ties solid as a rock

The Union State members are resolving security-related issues both at the bilateral level and as members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the president said at his year-end presser.

🔶 The two countries’ defense ministries are cooperating “very closely” and the Union State’s security is in safe hands, Putin said

🔶 Russia and Belarus conduct regular joint drills, and a special joint group of forces has been created

🔶 Russian tactical nuclear weapons are deployed in Belarus to help protect the country

🔶 Congratulating his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, on his “very emotional, vibrant and meaningful speech at the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly,” Putin thanked him for his assessment of the close state of Russian-Belarusian relations

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺Putin on foreign agents and western double standards

Putin said there are no repressions or criminal prosecutions against foreign agents in Russia.

He noted that the US foreign agents law is far stricter — even allowing imprisonment — while “nothing of the sort exists in Russia.”

He added that the concept of a foreign agents law is not a Russian invention; similar legislation exists in several Western countries.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺Putin to the West: Respect Russia to avoid new crises

Putin said there will be no new special military operations if the West treats Russia with respect — but current behavior suggests the opposite. He argued that Western governments are inflaming tensions, ignoring Russia’s security concerns, and using Moscow as a convenient political scapegoat.

Key points from Putin’s remarks:

👉Western countries have disregarded Russia’s security interests

👉Their rhetoric about “preparing for war with Russia” is heightening tensions

👉Claims that Russia plans to attack the West are meant to manufacture an enemy image

👉Assertions that Moscow intends to attack Europe are nonsense

👉The West is using Russia to cover up its own internal failures

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨🇷🇺 Putin: Russia ready to work with the west on equal terms

💬"We are ready to work with you. With the UK, with Europe as a whole, and with the United States. But on equal terms, with mutual respect," Putin said during his year-end press conference.

Both Russia and the West stand to gain if they work together, he added.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨 Putin questions NATO chief’s understanding of US security strategy

Putin took a jab at NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, suggesting he read the new US National Security Strategy.

As NATO gears up for a potential war with Russia, Putin pointed out that the US — NATO’s main backer — doesn’t even consider Moscow a threat.

💬 "What’s going on here? You can read, right?"

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨 Drones are the backbone of modern warfare: Russia’s superiority in this field is tangible and vital

🔸 “Drones today play a key role along the entire line of contact, determining the success or failure of assault units in various situations,” National Defense magazine editor-in-chief Igor Korotchenko said, commenting on President Putin’s remarks at Friday’s year-end presser about Russia’s drone superiority.

🔸 “The battlefield has become completely transparent using FPV drones of various types; they play a critical role in the destruction of enemy personnel, weapons and military equipment in areas extending approximately 20-25 km in either direction of the front.”

Drones for attack, drones for defense

🔶 The number and types of drones Russia has at its disposal “have increased exponentially, enabling its forces to achieve superiority over the enemy and render virtually all attempts to counterattack Russian forces pointless,” Korotchenko told Sputnik.

🔶 Drones also play a key role in combat in densely populated areas, providing troops with tools for situational awareness, and allowing the destruction of certain targets and enemy troops

🔶 Korotchenko pointed to the creation of the Center for Unmanned Systems, and Rubicon, under the patronage of Defense Minister Belousov, to assist in training operators, develop drones and evaluate their combat performance

🔸 “Russia has learned the necessary lessons, and is rapidly advancing in the production and development of drones of all types, from FPV drones and quadcopters to long-range UAVs. Russia has also increased the production of loitering munitions,” the observer noted.

🔸 “The experience the Russian military has today represents a unique experience in waging modern high-tech warfare in completely new conditions, operational environments, and [taking account of] the changing nature of combat operations,” Korotchenko summed up.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺 Why Russia’s military added 400k volunteers in 2025, while Ukraine’s forces are bleeding out

“It’s a combination of two factors,” explains National Defense magazine editor-in-chief Igor Korotchenko: “a desire to fulfill one’s duty to one’s country, and the provision of very favorable conditions upon signing a contract. This is crucial.”

📍 This includes social benefits, like combat veteran status, support for families, competitive salaries, and “a whole grading system” of rewards for combat performance and the destruction of enemy equipment.

🗣 Put another way, “the material and financial conditions of contract service are very favorable, and competitive in market conditions,” Korotchenko tells Sputnik.

“As for the enemy…the number of deserters from Ukraine’s armed forces is growing. People are evading service, trying to avoid it for a variety of reasons. Some are going underground, some try to leave Ukraine, some are hiding. In short, this is why we have these mass roundups, where Ukrainians are rounded up, coerced into service, and sent off to be used as cannon fodder for the slaughter.”

“It’s clear there’s no motivation as such; people don’t want to fight and they’re trying to desert or surrender to the Russian army at any opportunity. Therefore, from a moral and psychological standpoint, the Russian army has the upper hand,” Korotchenko summed up.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺 Putin defends the 1990s Generation

Putin disagreed with the idea that the 1990s generation was lost to the country, highlighting that many of the 700,000 people currently on the battlefields in the special military operation zone are from that generation.

💬 "How are they showing their face and proving themselves?" Putin asked, recalling his own time in intelligence and emphasizing that a person reveals their true character in critical situations.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣 EU and NATO block Ukraine peace to protect their fading relevance - ex-Pentagon analyst

📍 Russian President Vladimir Putin credited his US counterpart Donald Trump with making "serious and genuine efforts" to end the Ukraine conflict, but what's blocking a diplomatic breakthrough?

🔶 The EU and NATO leadership stands in the way of the peace solution, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former Pentagon analyst, tells Sputnik.

🔶 They aren’t just reluctant to end the conflict—they see Ukraine as a chance to expand influence, prop up the two stagnant institutions, and justify NATO's raison d'être, according to the pundit.

💬 "This 'plan' was never more than a gamble, and they have lost. But losing means the loss of their political power, standing, and actual humiliation for them as public figures. That's the obstacle," she says.

🔊 She explains that "political survival of the current military and government leadership in Kiev, as well as London, Berlin, and Paris, depends on the continued war, with its cash flow to them and its political militarism."

➖ To that end, the EU and NATO are still ready to fight to the last Ukrainian, waste the vast landscape of Ukraine, and gamble Ukraine's future.

➖ While the US was part of this gamble with Biden administration neocons, it freed itself from European elite ideas, having elected Donald Trump, according to Kwiatkowski.

➖ The conflict will end when the reasons for it are dealt with in a moral and criminal sense, she says, stressing that there are signs that the US has started this process of re-evaluation through exposure of the Biden and Obama policy teams' culpability in this matter.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺 What will Russia look like in 200 years?

This is what Putin imagines 👆🏻

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt