🎙 Excerpts from a Q&A session by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin at the meeting with young employees of nuclear industry enterprises (Sarov, August 22, 2025)

Key talking points:

• Rosatom is at the forefront of creating and implementing cutting-edge technologies, as well as executing major infrastructure projects, including the Northern Sea Route. <…> A great number of countries are interested in using it. Clearly, it would help reduce the transit times for cargo shipped from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and the entire Asia-Pacific region – a region developing, as everybody knows, at an incredibly fast pace that the Western world has not imagined.

• For a nation like Russia, the paramount – even vital – challenge is the ability to preserve its sovereignty. Now, it is true that there are countries which lack full sovereignty and are perfectly content with that arrangement. In fact, most Western European nations fall into that category today. There are many other countries that may be content with this arrangement – but not Russia. With the loss of sovereignty, Russia would simply cease to exist in its current form; that is absolutely certain.

• I would argue there are no unfriendly nations – only unfriendly elites governing them.

• [Previously] we have been focused on building [energy] ties with partners in friendly countries. <…> China, India, Bangladesh. We even launched a new project with Türkiye despite the special military operation – and Türkiye being a NATO member. So what have we actually lost? Finland, that is about it. We are still working in Hungary, for instance, which is both a NATO and an EU member. <…> We are, in fact, continuing the projects we used to run in [unfriendly] countries. We still supply nuclear fuel, and in substantial volumes. We are providing [services] at almost the same level.

• [President Trump] and I had a very good, constructive and frank discussion in Alaska. Our ministries, agencies, and companies remain in contact. I really hope that the first steps made are just the beginning of a full-scale recovery of Russia-US relations. <…> The next steps depend on the US leadership. I am certain that President Trump’s leadership skills are a good prerequisite for restoration of our relations. I hope that the pace of our joint work on this platform will be maintained.

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🎙 Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov's interview with NBC (Moscow, August 24, 2025)

Key talking points:

• President Vladimir Putin was invited by President Donald Trump. He visited Alaska. They had a very substantive meeting in Anchorage. <...> They discussed real things regarding security. The violation of Russian security interests was one of the root causes of what has happened.

• President Putin has regard for President Trump, respecting President Trump's concentration on the interest, national interest of the United States, national interest and well-being, and historic heritage of the American people. And I don't have any doubt that President Trump respects the same attitude of President Putin to protecting the national interests of Russia.

• President Trump suggested, after Anchorage, several points which we share, and on some of them we agreed to show some flexibility. When President Trump brought those issues to the meeting in Washington, with Zelensky present together with his European sponsors, he clearly indicated, it was very clear to everybody that there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership, including the discussion of territorial issues, and Zelensky said no to everything.

• President Putin <...> is ready to meet with President Zelensky, provided this meeting is really going to decide something.

• When we come to a stage where you have to sign documents, we would need a very clear understanding by everybody that the person who is signing is legitimate. And according to the Ukrainian constitution, Mr. Zelensky is not, at the moment.

• Last time our delegations met in Istanbul, we suggested to create three working groups, including on political matters. More than one month passed already, there is no response from the Ukrainian side.

• Indivisible security is something which was enshrined in many documents adopted by consensus at summits of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, in particular in Istanbul in 1999, and in Astana in 2010. This principle goes like: no one can strengthen their security at the expense of the security of others. No organization in the European space can pretend to dominate in military and political matters. And NATO has been doing exactly the opposite.

• Those discussions which took place after the Washington meeting, [Western countries] clearly indicate that people see security as only security for Ukraine and they are prepared to send an intervention force, an occupying force, to the Ukrainian territory to deter Russia. And this is not the way to handle the situation. <...> But security guarantees must be subject to consensus.

• Everything which is going on now has reasons in the decades and decades, of years when the West was building NATO, was moving NATO directly on Russian borders, and was building Ukraine as an instrument to defeat Russia in the battlefield, as it were.

• We don't have any interest in territories. We have the biggest territory on Earth. What we are concerned about, unlike those who raise the issue of invasion, taking more and more land, we are concerned about the people who live on those lands.

• Never, ever Russia deliberately targeted any sites which are not linked to military abilities of Ukraine. <...> We are dropping bombs on the targets which are directly involved in building Ukrainian military machines targeting the Russian civilians and continuing the war which Ukrainians started by instigation from the Biden administration, from the Europeans.

• We have the goals which will be achieved. The goals are: to remove any security threats to Russia coming from the Ukrainian territory, to protect the rights of the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking people who believe they belong to the Russian culture and Russian history. And the only way to protect them against this nazist regime is to give them the right to express their will.

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⚡️ Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation:

On 24 August, 146 Russian servicemen were returned from the territory controlled by the Kiev regime.

As a result of the exchange, 146 AFU POWs were returned.

Moreover, eight Russian Federation citizens from Kursk region who had been illegally detained by the Kiev regime were returned. Soon, they will be brought back home.

At present, the Russian servicemen are on the territory of the Republic of Belarus, where they are provided with the necessary psychological and medical assistance.

All released servicemen will be taken to the Russian Federation for treatment and rehabilitation in medical institutions of the Russian Defence Ministry.

During the return of Russian servicemen from captivity, humanitarian mediation efforts were provided by the United Arab Emirates.