💬 Extract from the briefing by Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Moscow, December 25, 2025

Ukraine crisis

The Kiev neo-Nazi regime continues to commit war crimes and acts of terrorism against Russia. Over the past week, 93 civilians were injured by Ukrainian shelling and drone strikes. Of these, 20 were killed and 73 were wounded, including three children. Here are some facts.

Belgorod Region. On December 17, three people were killed and 11 were wounded, including a 15-year-old girl, in strikes by Ukrainian Armed Forces FPV drones in the villages of Borki, Zamostye, and Otradnoye, and the city of Graivoron. On December 18, a civilian was killed when a UAV struck a car in Graivoron. On December 19, a five-month-old child was injured in an attack by a Ukrainian drone in Belgorod. On the same day, an FPV drone injured a man in the village of Plotovka. On December 20, a woman was killed when she stepped on an explosive device in the village of Bezlyudovka, and a man was injured by a UAV in Shebekino. On December 22, drone strikes on civilian vehicles in the Shebekinsky and Volokonovsky districts killed three civilians and injured four. On December 23, drone strikes killed one and wounded seven people, including a 13-year-old boy, in the villages of Novaya Tavolzhanka, Graivoron, Krasny Pakhar, and Belenkoye.

Bryansk Region. On December 18, three people were injured in a suicide drone attack on the village of Belaya Berezka.

DPR. On December 18-19, two were injured in strikes by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Krasnoarmeysk. On December 21, a woman was injured in a drone attack in Gorlovka.

Zaporozhye Region. On December 18, two people were killed in the villages of Verkhnyaya Krinitsa and Kamenka-Dniprovska in multiple artillery shelling and drone strikes by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and four were injured in Vasilyevka between December 19-21. On December 22, two civilians were injured in Pologi and Energodar, and another was injured in the Kamensko-Dneprovsky municipal district.

Moscow. On December 22, Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, Chief of the Operational Training Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, was killed in a car bombing. Investigators are examining possible involvement of Ukrainian special services.

Rostov Region. On the night of December 18, Ukrainian drones attacked Rostov-on-Don, Bataysk, and Taganrog. In the Rostov port, an attack that resulted in a fire on a cargo ship killed two crew members and wounded three others. In Bataysk, a 50-year-old woman died and six civilians were injured.

Sevastopol. On December 18, a 15-year Sevastopol girl, who had been injured in the Ukrainian attack on the city on November 30, died in a Moscow hospital.

Since February 2022, the number of children killed by Ukrainian Nazis in Russian regions has reached 238. This is the Kiev regime’s attitude to children.

Kherson Region. On December 18, a man born in 1965, was killed in the village of Chelburda by a bomb dropped from a drone. On the same day, in the village of Veliky Kopany, an employee of the Khersonenergo company was killed and three workers were injured when a UAV struck a repair service vehicle. On December 20-23, two women aged 35 and 60 were killed in drone attacks in the city of Novaya Kakhovka, and an 81-year-old woman and a 65-year-old man were injured.

Russian law enforcement authorities continue to prosecute Ukrainian war criminals.

A mercenary from Sweden, Karl Fredrik Christopher Forsbäck, has been sentenced in absentia to 27 years’ imprisonment for terrorism in the Kursk Region. He has been placed on the international wanted list.

Hayden William Davies, a UK mercenary taken prisoner, was sentenced to 13 years in a penitentiary.

Ukrainian UAV operator Gennany Tretyakov was found guilty in absentia for murdering a civilian resident of the Bryansk Region by dropping a bomb from a drone on February 9. The criminal has been placed on the international wanted list.

On December 19, the European Council approved at its meeting by the majority of votes an unprecedented loan to Ukraine amounting to 90 billion euros, which, according to President of France Emmanuel Macron, will be spend to finance Kiev’s military efforts in 2026-2027.

It looks like that this “enlightened” Europe that constantly declares the need for a peaceful settlement should better earmark those 90 billion euros for a plan of Ukrainian’s economic development (considering that they destroyed the statehood of Ukraine themselves). But, no. This is not in the plans of the European Council (top Brussels bureaucracy). They need a manslaughter.

The European Council has no spare money for this purpose. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has not given up the hope of using Russian government assets frozen in Europe to reimburse the costs of lending to the corrupt regime of Vladimir Zelensky. That is to commit an overt robbery. The Brussels meeting that lasted till morning has shown that far from everybody in the European Union are ready for this. They understand that this is not an adventure. This is a crime.

Undoubtedly, the 90-billion loan is to be repaid by ordinary Europeans and their children. On December 19, Politico, reported referring to European Commission officials, that starting 2028, EU taxpayers will have to pay around 3 billion euros annually in interest on the aforementioned loan to Kiev as part of the seven-year budget until 2034, with these payments beginning as early as 2027, when they will make up about 1 billion euros.

On December 20, Vladimir Zelensky publicly stated that he has no intention of repaying European Union funds, declaring that repayment would occur only if Russia were to pay reparations. Any rational observer understands that this will never happen.

Perhaps, Brussels will finally listen to what its fosterling has said out loud. Perhaps, European officials will realise that they are never going see this money: neither the €90 billion just allocated nor other loans. These funds will be recovered “in kind.” Some seek Ukrainian land or real estate, others natural resources and rare earth metals, and still others Ukrainian citizens – alive or dead. We know all too well how the West has historically manipulated the fate of Ukrainians. Cash repayment will never occur. What is most striking is not the conclusion itself, but the fact that Zelensky stated it openly.

On December 22, during a briefing in Brussels, EU Commission Deputy Chief Spokesperson Olof Gill announced the transfer of this year’s final tranche of financial assistance of €2.3 billion from the Ukraine Facility into the bottomless pockets of the Kiev regime “to support the functioning of the Ukrainian state.”

It is convenient to write off money in support of something that no longer exists in its original form. The Ukrainian state was destroyed directly by Western actors: through orchestrated coups, forced regime changes, the insertion of foreign “advisers” into ministries and agencies, and ultimately the construction of a vast, blood-soaked financial pipeline.

In total, in 2025 alone, the Kiev junta received six such transfers totalling €26.8 billion. The scale of the corruption scheme unfolding before the entire world is staggering.

This picture of stripping foreign assets is further completed by the statement of Ukrainian Defense Minister Denis Shmygal, who summarised the year’s results at the 32nd meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group (the Rammstein format) on December 16. According to him, if the West fulfills all its commitments, Ukraine’s military aid in 2025 will reach $45 billion, which is the largest amount since 2022. He also made it clear that Kiev expects this figure to grow in 2026. Bankovaya Street believes that its Rammstein partners can shoulder half of Ukraine’s $120 billion military budget and to continue replenishing it annually by deducting at least 0.25 percent of their national GDPs.

This arithmetic clearly shows that the Kiev regime’s European sponsors, above all in the European Union and the UK, do not even think about peace. They are thinking about how much money they will send to Kiev and how they will later retrieve it: not through official mechanisms, but through an entrenched and legalised corruption scheme. This is precisely why they continue to bet on escalation, deliberately prolonging the conflict and the bloodshed “to the last Ukrainian.” For them, it is only about money.

The EU governing agencies note that the Ukrainian military requirements are being transformed: earlier Ukraine was interested in a short-term training of soldiers, now it needs help in a long-term modernisation and restructuring of national armed forces. To satisfy this need in full, Europeans consider the possibility of transferring to Ukraine some of the EU military assistance training mission programmes for Ukrainian servicemen.

Well, it seems that soon there will be no one left to train. In Bankovaya Street they have decided to classify the desertion statistics (data circulated by the media differ from what is provided by the Kiev regime), to plug the gaps at the front, tighten the requirements for exemptions from military service and reduce the list of diseases that exempt from mobilisation. Those who voluntarily return from “desertion” are sent to assault units. Still, such measures will hardly help to solve the systemic problem of casualty replacement. Ukrainians understand what destiny is in store for them from Kiev corruptionists and do everything to save their lives.

On December 18, Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Servicemen Olga Reshetilova in her interview to The Glavred, a Ukrainian publication, admitted that “people often make their choice between death at war and several years of imprisonment in favour of imprisonment.” Their number is steadily growing. On December 20, head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence Kirill Budanov told the Levy Bereg publication that internal factors, including the ambitions of certain individuals, were behind the collapse of the mobilisation campaign in Ukraine. However, this failure has not deterred the Bankovaya Street. According to reports on Ukrainian social media, security forces have been tasked with “tightening the screws” and issuing around two million conscription notices in early 2026. In practice, it will be tantamount to general mobilisation.

On December 15, the “clergy” of the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine held its meeting at the St Michael’s Monastery in Kiev. It was timed to coincide with the 7th anniversary of the church’s establishment.

We do understand that they are not dissidents proceeding from their own interpretation of dogmas and theological analysis. This is a quasi organisation that must simply destroy the Orthodox faith, actually Christianity, in Ukraine. What the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is doing has nothing to do with religion or faith.

Judging by the photos posted on the Internet, this pseudo religious entity cannot boast a great number of clergy. The photographs show about 40 people whom, primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Metropolitan Epiphanius (Dumenko), tried to portray, are former clergymen of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, who allegedly voluntarily sided with the dissidents.

The defectors were tasked with persuading their former brethren in the canonical Church to renounce their faith and join the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. However, they failed to achieve this objective. In their own appeal, they admitted that “the episcopate and clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church have overwhelmingly ignored the historic opportunity for timely synodical unity.” As the saying goes, they set out to do one thing, but ended up accomplishing something different.

This outcome once again exposed the falsity of the figures long promoted by the schismatics regarding the alleged mass defection of parishes from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. According to the official data published by the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, more than 2,000 parishes of the canonical Church have supposedly “voluntarily” transferred to it over the past seven years, including around 1,300 since February 2022. Even a basic mathematical assessment shows that the real number of such defections amounts to no more than 2–3 percent.

However, manipulation of statistics and bluffing have become standard practice for the Kiev regime. A striking example is the unfounded claim of “tens of thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia.” In July, Bankovaya Street effectively acknowledged the falsity of these assertions by presenting a list of just 339 minors during talks in Istanbul. Moreover, a significant portion of that list did not even meet the criteria under which it was allegedly compiled.

The aforementioned meeting of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is also notable because it clearly demonstrated its inability – despite the active involvement of state authorities pursuing a policy of dismantling the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – to become a genuine nationwide church.

In this situation, we noted the Day of Action by Orthodox Christians and Their Allies, held on December 16 on Capitol Hill in Washington. Around 200 believers, including representatives of local US Orthodox churches and human rights advocates, organised public events and meetings with members of the US Congress to highlight the flagrant persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by the Kiev regime. It was supported by Republican Congress members Anna Paulina Luna and Eli Crane, leader of the Young Republicans wing and representative of the Society of St John of Shanghai Katherine Whiteford, as well as NY Young Republicans Club president Stephano Forte. In their speeches, they detailed the actions taken by the Zelensky regime against the canonical Church and openly questioned continued financial support for Bankovaya Street, which systematically violates religious rights and freedoms – principles that US authorities have long proclaimed as an inviolable guideline dogma for the State Department policy for decades.

It is highly likely that the growing international attention to the deteriorating state of freedom of religion in Ukraine has had a restraining effect on the Kiev authorities’ attempts to accelerate the legal prohibition of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Thus, the regular hearing of the 6th Kiev Administrative Court of Appeals, scheduled for December 11, concerning the lawsuit filed by the State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience seeking to terminate the activities of the Kiev Metropolitan diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and confiscate its property, was postponed indefinitely. The formal reason cited was the need to resolve the appeal against the ruling of the court of first instance. On December 16, the Supreme Court of Ukraine dismissed the appeal of the State Service for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, which sought to overturn the inferior court’s refusal to seize the property and bank accounts of the Kiev Metropolitan diocese. Two days later, on December 18, the appellate hearing on the Ministry of Culture’s lawsuit to evict monks of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra was likewise postponed indefinitely.

On December 19, Ukrainian media reported a decision by Kiev City Council to dismantle “15 structures or specific elements linked to the history and symbolism of Russian and Soviet political ideology.” This includes the removal of memorial plaques dedicated to figures such as Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Glinka, and Dmitry Manuilsky.

So Ukrainian children no longer need to know about classical music or its most celebrated composers. It is impossible to imagine the classical canon without Tchaikovsky. Clearly, that is not a consideration for the authorities in Kiev, who seem intent on ensuring that future generations forget his legacy entirely.

Have those responsible ever read Anna Akhmatova? Has anyone on the council read her Requiem – that stark, tragic, and profoundly honest elegy? No. We can assume Vitaly Klichko is basically literate, but did he ever read Akhmatova before issuing the order? The Kiev regime would do well to avoid such public disgrace, if any sense of shame remains (let alone conscience or a shred of morality.)

Other changes include redesigning the Viktor Vasnetsov plaque to remove the word “Russian,” and taking down the ‘Kiev – Hero City’ sign. The latter, sadly, makes a perverse kind of sense; under the current leadership, Kiev can scarcely be considered heroic. That city, built by previous generations through their dedicated work, sincere patriotism, and love for Ukraine, that spirit, forged through their courage and sacrifice, may one day return. But that is a matter for the future. Further revisions will see the text on the monument to liberator soldiers at St Michael’s Hospital translated into Ukrainian. The dates will be changed from “1941-1945” to “1939-1945,” and the “Great Patriotic War” will be re-designated as “World War II.”

Finally, the monument to Mikhail Bulgakov is slated for removal. It has already been shrouded in plastic and sandbags. Ironically, the very realities Bulgakov described are now unfolding in Ukraine. Despite this, Kiev residents continue to lay fresh flowers at its base.

No matter how hard the Banderites try to rewrite history and erase the memory of our shared past, they will not succeed.

The above facts underscore the relevance of our goals to denazify and demilitarise Ukraine and eliminate the threats from its territory. These objectives will be decisively achieved.

💬 Из стенограммы брифинга официального представителя МИД России М.В.Захаровой, Москва, 25 декабря 2025 г.

О звучащих в Польше призывах отобрать здание бывшего Генерального консульства России в Гданьске

• В СМИ Польши появились сообщения о попытках польских властей установить контроль над зданием бывшего российского Генерального консульства в Гданьске. В этой связи хотела бы кое-что прояснить.

• Здание Генерального консульства России в Гданьске, прекратившего свою работу 22 декабря с.г. в соответствии с требованием польских властей, принадлежит Российской Федерации. Данный объект недвижимости перешел к СССР в бессрочное и безвозмездное пользование в послевоенный период взамен исторического здания, с XVIII века принадлежавшего Консульству Российской империи, а затем CCCР – и разрушенного в ходе боевых действий во время Второй мировой войны.

• Рекомендуем горячим, видимо от поднявшейся температуры, головам в Польше, если кто-то задумает реализовать подобное, прибрать к рукам российскую недвижимость, для начала просчитать все возможные последствия подобных противоправных и провокационных действий.

• Думаю, есть уже немало примеров, как Россия отвечает и насколько это болезненные ответы для тех, кто совершает правовой произвол в отношении нашей страны.

💬 Ze stenogramu briefingu oficjalnego przedstawiciela MSZ Rosji Marii Zacharowej, Moskwa, 25 grudnia 2025 r.

O rozbrzmiewających w Polsce apelach o odebranie budynku byłego Konsulatu Generalnego Rosji w Gdańsku

• W polskich mediach pojawiły się informacje o próbach polskich władz przejęcia kontroli nad budynkiem byłego rosyjskiego Konsulatu Generalnego w Gdańsku. W związku z tym chciałabym coś wyjaśnić.

• Budynek Konsulatu Generalnego Rosji w Gdańsku, który zakończył swoją działalność 22 grudnia br. zgodnie z żądaniem władz polskich, należy do Federacji Rosyjskiej. Nieruchomość ta została przekazana ZSRR w wieczyste i nieodpłatne użytkowanie w okresie powojennym w zamian za historyczny budynek, który od XVIII wieku należał do Konsulatu Imperium Rosyjskiego, a następnie ZSRR, i został zniszczony w trakcie działań wojennych podczas II wojny światowej.

• Zalecamy gorącym, najwyraźniej z powodu podwyższonej temperatury, głowom w Polsce, jeśli ktoś zamierza zrealizować podobne zamiary, przywłaszczyć sobie rosyjską nieruchomość, aby na początek obliczyły wszystkie możliwe konsekwencje takich bezprawnych i prowokacyjnych działań.

• Uważam, że istnieje już niemało przykładów tego, jak Rosja odpowiada i jak bolesne są te odpowiedzi dla tych, którzy dopuszczają się bezprawia wobec naszego kraju.

🇷🇺 Key foreign policy outcomes of 2025

#Outcomes2025

In 2025, Russia made a significant contribution to strengthening the foundations of a just multipolar world order based on international law and cooperation between countries. Decisive steps were taken to protect the country’s vital national interests on the external front, with a focus on the CIS countries and Eurasia.

This year marked the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory. Alongside its like-minded international partners, Russia reaffirmed its commitment to inviolability of the post-war world order and its foundation in the form of the full body of principles enshrined in the UN Charter understood as an indivisible and interdependent whole.

• In the Commonwealth of Independent States, 2025 was declared the Year of Peace and Unity in the Fight against Nazism.

• A solemn General Assembly session to commemorate WWII victims was held at Russia’s initiative at the New York UN headquarters in May. An annual resolution on combatting glorification of Nazism and neo-Nazism co-sponsored by 44 countries was adopted in December.

• Comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction between Russia and China received a strong boost thanks to successful leader diplomacy by President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping and reciprocal visits to Moscow in May and to Beijing in September.

• After the new US administration came to the White House in January, political dialogue with Washington at the top levels was restored. During the Russia-US summit in Anchorage on August 15, understandings were reached that could form the basis for resolving the Ukraine conflict by addressing its underlying causes, including military threats to Russia created by NATO expansion and policies undermining the rights of the Russian and Russian-speaking populations.

• Relations with North Korea took on a new dimension, with the DPRK providing allied assistance in liberating the Kursk Region from Ukrainian militants and contributing significantly to creating proper conditions for the region’s return to peaceful life, in accordance with the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty.

• A new stage in relations with Iran was marked by the signing in January and entry into force in October of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty.

• Tangible results were achieved in supporting integration processes in Eurasia.

• Within the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), priority tasks were identified for implementing the collective security strategy, steps were taken to strengthen the combat readiness of collective forces, and an anti-narcotics strategy through 2030 was approved.

• On December 14, at the initiative of Russia and other member states of the Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter, the UN General Assembly proclaimed the International Day for the Elimination of Colonialism in all its forms, and on December 4, the International Day for Combatting Unilateral Coercive Measures.

• Measures taken to protect Orthodox Christianity and other Russian religions and denominations created favourable conditions for the resettlement of foreign nationals, including from countries with unfriendly governments, to our country under the framework of the Presidential Executive Order On Providing Humanitarian Support to Individuals Sharing Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values.

• Efforts to combat the spread of untruthful information about Russia in foreign printed and social media intensified, including through cooperation with our international partners within the International Fact-Checking Network.

❗️ The firm defence of national interests in relations with the countries whose governments undertake hostile anti-Russian actions forced them to recognise the impossibility of inflicting on Russia a “strategic defeat on the battlefield” and led them to adopt a concept of an immediate cessation of hostilities in the Ukrainian theatre of operations.

Read in full

🎙 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with TASS News Agency (December 28, 2025)

Key points

• Russia appreciates efforts by President of the United States Donald Trump and his team to achieve a peace settlement. We are committed to continuing to work with the American negotiators to devise lasting agreements for addressing the conflict’s root causes.

We see that Vladimir Zelensky’s regime and his European curators are not ready to engage in constructive talks. <...> Meanwhile, almost all European countries with few exceptions have been pumping the Kiev regime full of money and weapons.

• There has been a thorough effort to review the updated version of the US National Security Strategy, which is quite understandable. Its central tenets must be supported by what the US does, but even today it offers a new vision. Experts believe that this could be indicative of an effort in Washington to reconsider its international standing. <...> 👉 Speaking of Russia, one thing worth mentioning is the fact that the strategy does not contain any calls to subject our country to a system-wide containment and deterrence policy.

It may be the first time for the United States when it publicly questioned NATO’s long-standing commitment to expansionism, even if it stopped short of undertaking not to expand NATO. <...> Some of the ideas set forth in this strategy are not at odds with efforts to promote dialogue between Russia and the United States. That said, we will make our final decisions only by looking at what the US administration does on the international stage.

• The EU has been seeking to dismantle mechanisms for working with Russia. It all started somewhere around 2014, when the ruling elites in most European countries started <...> inciting Russia-hating and militarist sentiment among their people.

• In 2025, we witnessed unprecedented events with Israel carrying out a direct act of aggression against Iran together with the United States, which targeted facilities related to the Iranian nuclear programme with missile and bomb strikes despite the fact that these facilities benefit from IAEA’s guarantees. <...> We would like to note that the Iranians have been exercising maximum restraint and composure by responding to all the provocations and blackmail on behalf of the West by stating their commitment to dialogue and resolving the lingering differences by political means.

We have shared our assessment of the situation in the Gaza Strip many times. We welcomed international mediation efforts. Thanks to these efforts the hot phase of the bloodshed that lasted since October 2023 was stopped and the mass starvation of the Palestinians prevented. <...>

The main thing here is to remedy the historical injustice and provide for establishing a viable Palestinian state, which would coexist with Israel.

• Taiwan is currently used as a tool of military-strategic deterrence against the PRC. This is also a matter of pursing vested interests. <...> We believe that the Taiwan problem is an internal affair of the PRC.

• Whether leaders like Ursula von der Leyen, Friedrich Merz, Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron and the like have reached a point of no return is hard to say. We do see that so far, the European war party has been investing its political capital in inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, and is ready to go the whole nine yards. <...> Not only they do not care about the Ukrainians but they do not care about their people either.

This is the only way to explain the fact that there is still talk in Europe about sending military forces to Ukraine as part of the so-called coalition of the willing. We have said many times that in this case our Armed Forces would view them as a legitimate target.

❗️My messages for European politicians who seem to have problems getting to grips with this fact – I hope they get to read this interview – is to repeat one more time 👉 there is no need to be afraid of Russia attacking anyone. However, should anyone consider attacking Russia, they would face a devastating blow.

Read in full

🎙 Интервью Временного поверенного в делах России в Польше А.Э.Ордаша телеканалу "Соловьев Live", 28 декабря 2025 г.

🎙Wywiad Chargé d'Affaires a.i. Rosji w Polsce Andrei'a Ordasza dla telewizji "Sołowjow Live", 28 grudnia 2025 r.