🇷🇺 Lavrov: Europe and Zelensky are avoiding any final settlement to keep military pressure on Russia

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🇷🇺 FM Lavrov: Europe has sought Russia’s strategic defeat since the 19th century

He adds that Europe is the source of many of today’s problems.

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🇷🇺 Lavrov sums up Russian diplomacy in 2025

At a press conference reviewing Russian diplomacy over the past year, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov outlined Moscow’s views on key global and regional developments:

🔸 If the West wants to talk to itself "by its own rules," that is its choice, but Russia will act on the basis of equality and principles

🔸 The goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia is still on European leaders’ minds

🔸 The West seeks regime change in Iran

🔸 The US perpetrated a 'blatant armed invasion' of Venezuela and now threatens Cuba and other Latin American countries

🔸 Global rules have been swept aside and replaced with "might makes right" approach

🔸 Russia does not claim others' lawful rights and will not allow its own rights to be trampled

🔸 European leaders are seriously preparing for war with Russia

🔸 The need for a Palestinian state remains relevant, including in the context of US President Donald Trump's 'Peace Council' initiative

🔸 Russia has received concrete proposals on the 'Peace Council,' reflecting US recognition of the need for international cooperation

🔸 The EU again seeks to build a security framework against Russia, now involving Ukraine

🔸 Reaching agreement with current European leaders may be impossible

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🚨🇮🇳🇷🇺 Russia’s 100% import-free SJ-100 to fly to India soon: Industry and Trade Ministry

The international civil aviation exhibition Wings India 2026 will take place at Begumpet Airport in India from 28 to 31 January.

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

⚡️ In response to attacks on civilian targets in Russia, the Russian Armed Forces launched a massive overnight strike using long-range precision weapons and attack drones

The targets included:

🟠 Ukrainian military industrial facilities

🟠 Energy facilities, and transport infrastructure used by the Ukrainian forces

🟠 Ammunition depots, and long-range unmanned aerial vehicle production centers

▫️ Russian forces hammered 158 Ukrainian command posts used by Kiev's military units and foreign mercenaries

▫️ Air defense superiority: 5 HIMARS projectiles and 254 drones shot down

▫️ Ukrainian losses: around 1,240 troops killed or wounded

Read about the origins of Russia's special military op HERE

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🇺🇸🇪🇺 Rift with US on Ukraine exposes Europe’s ‘strategically incoherent’ foreign policy - expert

👉 Foreign Minister Lavrov’s assessment that the US “is now the ‘only Western power willing to tackle the root causes’ of the Ukraine conflict is a calculated acknowledgement of a seismic change,” says geopolitical analyst Marco Marsili, recalling that for Russia, these ‘root causes’ are about NATO expansion.

🔶 For Ukraine, “this shift is an existential diplomatic earthquake,” as the Iscte-University Institute of Lisbon researcher puts it, signaling intense pressure from the US, Kiev’s primary patron, cutting down its maximalist goals of total victory, and forcing it to admit that “concessions are inevitable.”

🔶 For Europe, the shift “exposes a profound failure of strategy,” with the Europeans’ slavish “strategic dependency” backfiring, and creating a “potentially paralyzing” strategic bind, with Europe refusing to make peace with Russia, but simultaneously lacking “the unified command, logistical spine, and nuclear deterrent to seriously fill the vacuum left by a distancing United States.”

💬 “The bind is thus twofold: they cannot effectively confront Russia without America, nor can they easily accept America’s new terms for peace, which may legitimize spheres of influence they have spent decades rejecting. The result is strategic incoherence,” Marsili summed up.

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🇺🇸 Trump’s Gaza peace council: another sign of emerging world order?

📍 The US president’s proposals for a Gaza ‘Peace Council’ with Russian involvement “is a hallmark of the emerging Trumpian era: pragmatic, ad-hoc, and deliberately outside established multilateral channels,” Iscte-University Institute of Lisbon researcher Marco Marsili told Sputnik.

💬 “It represents a move away from consensus-based, inclusive institutions burdened by bureaucracy and ideological divides (like the OSCE or the UN) towards flexible, result-oriented frameworks controlled by a handful of powerful actors. Its success or failure will be judged solely on outcomes in Gaza, not on process.”

🔊 EU countries’ refusal to join the proposed peace council “cuts to the heart of the emerging world order,” Marsili says.

Dissenters “risk marginalization not from the ‘international community’ as an abstract concept, but from the key corridors where power and deals are now concentrated. The new order is not built on universal membership but on networks of influence and transactional agreements. Non-participation means ceding agenda-setting power to others.”

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🇫🇷 Macron to Trump in Davos: “This new colonial approach makes no sense”

🔹 Speaking at Davos Forum in Switzerland on Tuesday, Emmanuel Macron said France and Europe must choose sovereignty over the “law of the strongest” as Washington eyes Greenland.

🔹 Ironically, Macron echoed his earlier statement made in 2018 after tense talks with Trump. Back then, Trump lambasted Macron's suggestion to build a European army.

💬 "The United States is our historic ally and will continue to be. It's the ally with which we take all the risks, with which we carry out the most complicated operations. But being an ally doesn't mean being a vassal state," Macron said.

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🗣 OSCE’s decline into irrelevance is ‘a clinical diagnosis’ - expert

📍 Foreign Minister Lavrov’s characterization of the Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe as a body that has hit “rock bottom” is, “unfortunately, a clinical diagnosis rather than mere polemic,” veteran geopolitical researcher Marco Marsili says.

🔊 “The single most important reason for its collapse is the total erosion of the foundational principle of ‘indivisible security’,” the academic said, pointing out that after the start of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, the principle of ‘interconnected’ security for all states from Vancouver to Vladivostok was lost.

The OSCE was turned into a platform for mutual recrimination, with its principle of consensus, “once a strength,” turned into “a tool for paralyzing the organization entirely.”

💬 “The OSCE is not beyond saving in theory, but it is in current practice. It can only be revived if its major members—principally Russia and the NATO states—recommit to a dialogue of equals on European security, which is presently unthinkable. For now, it serves as a museum piece of a bygone era of optimism, its mechanisms frozen in the ice of a new Cold War.”

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🇷🇺💪🏻Advanced Russian drones hit global stage at Abu Dhabi's UMEX 2026

For the first time ever, Russia’s Rosoboronexport arms exporter unveils its battle-proven, world-beating UAV lineup at UMEX 2026 exhibition, Director General Alexander Mikheev underscored.

Rosoboronexport is presenting drones and loitering munitions that are in highest demand on the global market, opening the door to export deliveries and technology cooperation:

🔶 The upgraded Lancet-E reconnaissance/strike UAV system, which includes the Z-16E reconnaissance UAV and Item 51E / Item 52E loitering munitions developed by ZALA Aero

🔶 The Kub-2-2E loitering munition, which is developed and manufactured by Kalashnikov Group and features an automatic guidance system refined through actual battlefield experience.

🔶 The Skat-350M & SuperCam S350: cutting-edge reconnaissance UAVs delivering crystal-clear intel and rapid deployment.

🔶 Lightweight reconnaissance beasts Karakurt and Goliath from Kalashnikov – perfect for soldier/squad/platoon level operations.

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🇷🇺As Crimea marks Republic Day on January 20, watch Sputnik’s video to see how the peninsula is developing today – from infrastructure and industry to social projects shaping everyday life.

Take a look at the region’s growth, modernization and the path it is charting for its future.

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🇫🇷Macron’s proposal to invite Russia to G7 meeting is really all about Trump - expert

The French president’s pitch to invite Russian representatives to a G7 meeting in Paris is not about Russia at all, but trying to restore Europe’s relevance in a fragmenting West, and wooing the US president, says Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy deputy director Dmitry Suslov.

💬“Macron’s proposal pursues two goals: first: overcoming the growing isolation of both France and Europe as a whole, including on the Ukrainian issue, as the US fails to consult with them sufficiently, and continues to work on the issue through bilateral ties with Russia,” Suslov explained.

👉The gesture is aimed at “overcoming” Europe’s “growing marginalization in decision-making on key international issues, regarding both the Ukrainian conflict and the Greenland issue.”

💬“Second, Macron is attempting to drag Trump” back into the “kind of pan-Western forum” that the G7 is supposed to represent – to restore a Western bloc that takes the opinion of Europe, which the US leader is actively flouting, back into account.

❗️Macron’s aim is to use talks to pull Trump back into alignment with “the positions of the European war party in relation to the Ukrainian conflict,” and effectively, “prevent Trump from being Trump.”

As far as Russia is concerned, “this isn’t an acknowledgement of the growing role of BRICS, nor a genuine desire on Macron’s part to contribute to the resolution of the Ukrainian and Greenland crises,” according to Suslov. Quite the opposite.

Correspondence shared by US President Trump suggests that French President Macron was open to inviting Russia’s representatives to the upcoming G7 meeting in Paris.

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😤France’s rejection of Trump’s Gaza board is a capricious outburst related to other issues - expert

The move “reflects Macron’s dissatisfaction with the proposals made by Donald Trump, including the statements and ultimatums he’s made regarding Greenland and Ukraine,” says Russian Council on Foreign & Defense Policy researcher deputy director Dmitry Suslov.

💬“Macron believes this is a way to express his dissatisfaction without paying a high political price.”

France "does not intend to answer favorably" to an invitation to join Trump's "Board of Peace," French media reported previously, citing commitment to the UN.

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🇫🇷 Macron’s move to invite Russia to G7 is belated, phony attempt to show Europe is still relevant - prof

💬 “I think the Europeans are truly frightened by the Greenland affair, because it threatens to fundamentally change their position in the world…They’re trying to avoid it at all costs, [including by] coming up with various stories showing Trump that they’re capable of something,” Higher School of Economics professor Timofey Bordachev told Sputnik, commenting on the French president’s gesture.

🔶 The aim is to show, for example, “that the Europeans can accommodate Trump on the Ukraine issue, to invite Russia to some meeting and come to some kind of agreement,” so he might pull back on the Greenland issue.

🔶 Russia understands that this is a “purely tactical gesture,” related not to Russia-Europe ties but relations between the US and Europe, Bordachev emphasized. “It has nothing to do with Russia. It has nothing to do with BRICS.”

Correspondence shared by US President Trump suggests that French President Macron was open to inviting Russia’s representatives to the upcoming G7 meeting in Paris.

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🇪🇺 Europe exhausting itself in Ukraine, ignoring looming crisis - expert

While Washington has apparently recognized that the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine is “lost” and Ukraine is “a liability,” the Europeans are pushing headfirst into prolonging the conflict, no matter the cost to themselves, Daffodil International University professor Greg Simons says.

💬 “Europeans seem to have their head in the clouds and unaware or not willing to see” the “risks and hazards coming up for them.”

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