🌐 On December 26, the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council Meeting was held in the Leningrad Region.

💬 President Putin: I am delighted to welcome you all at the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council Meeting. <...>

This year marks the tenth anniversary of signing the Treaty on Establishing the Eurasian Economic Union. In May, Moscow hosted a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, dedicated to this anniversary date.

Our association has asserted itself as an independent and self-sufficient centre of an emerging multipolar world, and it continues to develop dynamically.

The Eurasian Economic Union’s activities help expand trade and investment exchanges, boost business contacts and deepen cooperation ties. Most importantly, integration collaboration brings real benefits to every member of our association. It helps facilitate stable and sustained economic growth in the five member states and in the entire Eurasian region. This improves living standards of our countries’ citizens and their well-being.

🇷🇺 Russia values mutually beneficial multi-faceted cooperation with #EAEU partners, and we are sincerely interested in invigorating joint work to comprehensively strengthen our integration association.

I am convinced that all colleagues, who are present here, share this commitment. I therefore hope that our meeting will be productive and truly business-like.

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🎙 Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with Russian and international news media (Moscow, December 26, 2024)

❓ Question: Talks are the top priority, no question about it. Many opinions are heard coming from the diplomatic circles, experts, and other sources. To put it in plain terms, they are trying hard to see both of us make peace. The question is, though, who are we supposed to talk to in Kiev? President-elect Trump’s presumptive special envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg has come up with an initiative. What’s your take on the situation?

💬 Sergey Lavrov: Much has been said on this subject. President Putin has repeatedly addressed this issue, including during the Direct Line and during the Valdai International Discussion Club meeting before that, as well as other events.

☝️ Empty talk is not for us.

Everything we have heard so far was rhetoric about the need to come up with some kind of a ceasefire. However, not much is done to hide the fact that the purpose of a ceasefire is to buy time and to flood Ukraine with weapons, to help it get back in shape, to carry out additional mobilisation, and so on.

Ceasefire [temporary measures] is a road leading nowhere.

We need binding legal agreements that will lay out the conditions for ensuring Russia’s security and the legitimate security interests of our neighbours. However, they should exist in an international legal context that would preclude chances of violating these agreements.

These agreements must address Ukraine crisis’ root causes. The two main ones include, first, the violation of the commitments not to expand NATO to the east and the aggressive absorption by NATO of the geopolitical space all the way up to our borders. This is what they had in store for Ukraine. They keep talking about it to this day.

The second root cause includes the Kiev regime’s absolutely racist actions following the coup. The extermination of everything Russian, including language, mass media, culture, and even the use of the Russian language in everyday life, was officially greenlighted and then codified into law. That includes outlawing the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

We are told that Russia is allegedly putting forward preliminary conditions. In fact, these are not preconditions, but demands to act in line with previous agreements.

As it turns out, they lied to us when they assured us that NATO would not expand eastward. They lied to us when they emphasised their commitment to a settlement based on the UN Charter fully forgetting that this Charter stipulates more than the principle of territorial integrity and also includes the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples. It took the General Assembly quite a while to consider the relationship between these principles before it resolved by consensus in its wisdom that the territorial integrity of all states whose governments abide by the principle of self-determination and, therefore, represent the entire population living within the borders of the territory in question must be respected.

How can Kiev’s Nazi regime represent the interests of the residents of Crimea, Donbass, or Novorossiya, whom it declared terrorists right after the coup and launched a military “anti-terrorist operation” against them?

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As President Putin said, we are willing to consider serious and concrete proposals. I hope that the Trump Administration, including Mr Kellogg, will look into the root causes of the conflict.

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Key talking points:

• Russia and China have a real stabilising effect on international relations.

• The Americans prefer to get rid of competitors; it is their policy. Now they are “taking out” Russia, and beginning to do the same with regard to China.

• We are fully aware that the US relies on a bipartisan consensus with regard to Russia. This is not a friendly, but, to put it bluntly, Russophobic consensus.

• We receive signals from the overwhelming majority of Latin American countries expressing their interest in strengthening partnership with Russia.

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✉️ President of Russia Vladimir Putin extended condolences to President of India Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi on the passing of former Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh (December 27, 2024)

Excerpt:

✍️ President Putin: Manmohan Singh was an outstanding statesman.

As Prime Minister and when serving in other high-ranking positions, he accomplished a lot in promoting India’s economic development and asserting its interests on the world stage.

He also made a major personal contribution to strengthening friendly ties between our two countries by elevating them to the level of a special privileged strategic partnership.

🕯 I had the occasion of talking with this remarkable man several times. We will cherish the memory of him.

#RussiaIndia

🎙 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with TASS news agency (December 30, 2024)

Key points:

#Ukraine #USA

• We have not received any official signals [from the USA] regarding a settlement in Ukraine.

• We are not happy with the proposals made by members of the Trump team to postpone Ukraine’s admission to NATO for 20 years and to station British and European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine.

• What we need is reliable and legally binding agreements that would eliminate the root causes of the conflict and seal a mechanism precluding the possibility of their violation.

#RussiaUSA #NATO

• We are ready to renew the political dialogue which Washington terminated after the start of the special military operation, if the United States is ready for this. Since it was the Americans who cut it off, it is for them to make the first move.

• They [the West] have been long relying on efforts to interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries, including our closest neighbours, as their foreign policy tool. For many years, Washington and its satellites have been acting this way in an effort to deter and contain their geopolitical rivals and do away with any unwanted actors, as confirmed by what happened in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.

#Georgia

• The developments in Georgia stem from the double standards when caring for democracy and human rights serves as a pretext for overturning election results after even the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights with its tainted reputation recognised the election as being free and fair. Why do they want to change the results? Just because the puppet masters in Washington and Brussels did not find the way people voted there to their liking.

• The United States and the European Union are trying to impose a distorted vision on Tbilisi which consists of dividing everyone into those who are with us and those who are against us. Meanwhile, it seems that Georgian authorities have opted for a sovereign policy which meets the country’s national interests. They refuse to act as pawns manipulated by the West in its effort to destabilise Georgia, undermine its economy and incite escalation in its relations with Russia.

#Syria #MiddleEast

• The Syrians’ hopes for improvements after a convincing defeat of international terrorism, including with the help of Russia’s Aerospace Forces, have not materialised.

• Washington, which has effectively occupied the resource-rich north-eastern part of Syria and is putting serious sanctions pressure on Damascus together with a coalition of its satellites, bears a great deal of blame for this. This line for strangling the Syrian economy stirred up social discontent.

• Trying to maintain its influence [in the Middle East and North Africa], Washington actively interfered in the internal affairs of Arab countries and aggressively drew new dividing lines there. Iraq and Libya are still trying to clear up the consequences of the Americans and their satellites’ reckless behaviour.

#China

• The Americans are taking inciting actions in the Taiwan Strait and supplying weapons to Taipei while forging a quasi-political dialogue with the local authorities.

• It is clear to us that this policy pursued by Washington in violation of its obligations to Beijing on Taiwan is part of their strategy to step up military and political pressure on the PRC and eventually undermine regional security at the eastern end of the Eurasian continent.

• Russia reaffirms its adherence to the #OneChina principle, recognises that Taiwan is an inalienable part of the People’s Republic of China, opposes any form of “Taiwan independence,” and firmly supports China’s measures to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity and achieve national reunification.

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