🇷🇺 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.

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🇷🇺 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.

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🗣 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.

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🇷🇺 What will Russia look like in 200 years?

This is what Putin imagines 👆🏻

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🇷🇺 Vladimir Putin has wrapped up his extensive year-end press conference, which lasted over 4 hours

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

⚡️ Russian forces liberated four settlements over the past week

In response to attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure, the Russian Aerospace Forces conducted one massive and six group strikes with high-precision weapons against Ukraine militants

🔸 The Tsentr Battlegroup continued decimating Ukrainian forces in Dimitrov and mopping up militants from Rodinskoye, Svetloye, and Grishino in the Donetsk People's Republic

🔸 Air defense superiority: 1,689 drones were shot down

🔸 Ukrainian losses: 8,405 troops killed or wounded

Read about origins of Russia's special military op HERE

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🇷🇺 Putin's year-end marathon presser in 2 minutes

What did the president talk about?

👉Russia’s primary wish for 2026

👉The Russian military’s battlefield dominance

👉Zelensky’s video, allegedly from Kupyansk

👉NATO and relations with Europe

👉Advice for NATO’s Rutte

👉Relations with China

👉The true nature of 3I/ATLAS

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🚨 Here’s why Zelensky’s clique refuses to surrender, even if it means Ukraine’s total collapse

The strategic initiative is in Russia’s hands, and the longer Ukraine’s leadership puts off talks, the worse it will be for Kiev, says Swedish Armed Forces veteran and defense analyst Mikael Valtersson, commenting on President Putin’s comments at his year-end presser on the state of the Ukrainian crisis.

💬 “The Ukrainian approach to the peace process is very hard to understand,” Valtersson told Sputnik.

🗣“The Ukrainian leadership is desperate not to appear as losers towards the Ukrainian population, and also has been partially blinded by their own propaganda. Ukraine is very good at information warfare and has convinced a large part of the European and Ukrainian population that the war is a stalemate that is favorable to Ukraine.”

👉Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky is “in a very difficult situation,” and knows that “if he loses power he might even lose his freedom and maybe also his life.”

🔊“He can't have elections until he gets a good peace deal if he wants to retain power. He therefore clings on to power and waits for a [miracle], much like Hitler did in 1944-45…Zelensky prioritizes his own well-being over the future and lives of the Ukrainian population. The result will probably be more lost Ukrainian territories and soldiers, as well as an even harsher final peace,” Valtersson explained.

❗️Russian forces have held the strategic initiative since the fall of 2023, focusing on advancing with “as few casualties as possible and at the same time maximiz[ing] Ukrainian casualties…a kind of offensive attritional warfare,” according to the observer.

📍Russia has advanced ~6k sq km in 2025, up from ~4k sq km in 2024. Valtersson expects this trend to “increase significantly” in the coming year, with Ukraine’s southern front crumbling, and Russian forces advancing through the Donbass, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk, and Kharkov regions.

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🇷🇺Lavrov slams western security promises to Ukraine as 'military occupation' bid

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has condemned the proposed security guarantees for Ukraine, calling them an attempt to "militarily occupy Ukrainian territory as a foothold for creating threats to Russia."

He was speaking at a press conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry in Cairo.

Lavrov’s key statements:

🔶Russian is concerned about European Union (EU) talks on guarantees, calling for collective security based on Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe principles

🔶The EU should not be a third party in Russia-US peace talks on Ukraine

🔶Putin is ready to engage with French President Emmanuel Macron, but only within proper protocol

🔶Russia supports a political solution to the conflict, but only the US is currently open to dialogue

🔶Russia wants a system of indivisible security in Europe to prevent militarization

The second ministerial conference of the Russia-Africa partnership forum is underway in Cairo on Friday and Saturday, the first such event in Africa.

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🔥 Expert: Putin seeks peace while EU warmongering makes Europe suffer

President Putin consistently emphasizes a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict, Syrian expert Mirzad Hajim tells Sputnik.

Hajim praises Russia’s efforts for a lasting peace as it rejects repeat of the Minsk agreements, stressing clarity of its demands and commitment to achieving the goals of the special military operation.

🗣 Talks within EU about providing security guarantees to Ukraine are aimed at prolonging the conflict, according to the expert. While “European nations suffer from the escalating crises" resulting from EU's warmongering policies, Hajim points out.

He notes that "the Ukrainian people have lost faith in Zelensky, who has become a symbol of corruption."

💬 "Ukraine is heading for inevitable collapse, given the use of mercenaries under various pretexts” amid split within the European community,” Hajim underscores.

Dwelling on the problem of Russophobia, he calls it “a historical legacy of the West,” despite Russia’s role in protecting Europe from various threats. “Putin is trying to put an end to this [Russophobia-related] narrative,” Hajim concludes.

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