🇩🇪 German defense minister: Berlin is not an ally of Ukraine

In an interview with ZDF, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius commented on accusations of insufficient military aid to Kiev, adding that Berlin and other partners are "doing what they can":

"First of all, we are not an ally of Ukraine. This means that we are not in a situation that obliges us to intervene within the framework of the alliance," he said.

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WATCH LIVE: Putin Arrives in Abu Dhabi For Talks With UAE President

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🇷🇺🇦🇪 During Putin's arrival, the sky over Abu Dhabi was painted with the Russian tricolor

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WATCH LIVE: Putin Pays Official Visit to UAE

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🇨🇳🇷🇺 Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Washington needs to stop interfering in the internal affairs of the Asian country, the state-run television reported on Wednesday.

The diplomats also discussed during a phone conversation the situation in the Middle East, with Wang pointing a ceasefire as the main priority, the media added.

Earlier in the day, the US Department of State said that Blinken held a phone conversation with his Chinese counterpart.

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🇷🇺🇦🇪 Negotiations between Putin and the UAE’s president have begun in Abu Dhabi. The UAE leader called the Russian president a “dear friend.”

Putin said that relations between Russia and the UAE have reached an unprecedented high level.

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❗️ Su-35S fighters accompanied Putin’s plane throughout the flight to Abu Dhabi, Peskov said.

To escort the presidential plane, special permissions were obtained from the countries over which the flight took place; the Kremlin is grateful to them for their cooperation, the presidential press secretary said.

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The Russian Ministry of Defense published a video of the Russian President's plane being escorted by Su-35S fighters

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NATO statements about need to prevent a “direct clash” with Russia is a distraction, aimed at whitewashing alliance leaders before their votes, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

In late November, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance’s main goal is to prevent a war between NATO and Russia.

“Everything that NATO members, including Secretary General Stoltenberg, say, that their main task is to prevent a direct clash, is all hypocrisy … Some kind of a game for distraction. I think in order to somehow whitewash the regimes that are members of NATO in the face of their voters, saying that they have nothing to do with it, that they are not participants, that they are simply helping the Kiev regime,” Zakharova told a briefing.

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❗️ Su-35S fighters will accompany Putin's plane throughout his current foreign trip - including to Riyadh and then to Moscow, Peskov told Sputnik

🇺🇳 "The situation in the world that I am describing is grim because these are dark times. Today there are 55 conflicts in the world, which is a record since the Second World War," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said at a briefing in Geneva.

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🇮🇷🇺🇸 A Tehran court has ruled that the US government must pay approximately $50 billion in damages for the 2020 assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.

The Tehran court, acting on a lawsuit filed by over 3,300 Iranians, held 42 entities, including Trump, the US government, and former officials Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper, accountable for "material, moral, and punitive damages."

This decision, announced by the Iranian judiciary, comes nearly four years after Soleimani and his Iraqi associate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport, an operation ordered by then-President Donald Trump.

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🇷🇺 Vladimir Putin has finished the negotiations in the UAE; later today he will visit Saudi Arabia.

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