President Vladimir Putin told Russians in a New Year address that the country would move forward with confidence in 2025, though he offered no specific promises on the economy or the war in Ukraine.

At a time when many ordinary people are worried about rising prices and the central bank’s 21% interest rate is squeezing businesses and homebuyers, Putin reassured Russians that their wellbeing was his top priority.

He framed Russia’s challenges as part of a wider historic mission, evoking past victories including its role in the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War Two.

Russia, he said, had overcome trials, achieved major goals and strengthened its unity in the first quarter of the 21st century – a period coinciding exactly with his time as its paramount leader.

“And now, on the threshold of the new year, we are thinking about the future. We are confident that everything will be fine, we will only move forward. We know for sure that the absolute value for us was, is and will be the fate of Russia, the well-being of its citizens,” he said.

His three-and-a-half-minute seasonal message from the Kremlin was being broadcast at midnight in each of Russia’s 11 time zones, starting with Kamchatka and Chukotka in the far east.

He was speaking exactly 25 years since he first addressed the nation as its acting president after Boris Yeltsin resigned unexpectedly on the last day of 1999.

Putin, 72, paid tribute to Russian soldiers fighting in the war in Ukraine, describing them as heroes. “We are proud of your courage and bravery. We believe in you,” he said.

He made no specific reference to the situation on the battlefield or the prospects for an end to the conflict after Donald Trump returns as U.S. president on Jan. 20. Trump has said he will swiftly stop the war, without providing details.

LOSSES IN UKRAINE

Russian forces in 2024 advanced in Ukraine at the fastest rate since 2022, the war’s first year, and control about a fifth of the country. But the gains have come at the cost of heavy, though undisclosed, losses in men and equipment.

In 2024, Russia was invaded for the first time since World War Two as Ukraine grabbed a slice of its western Kursk region in a surprise counter-attack on Aug. 6.

Russia has yet to eject Ukrainian forces from Kursk despite bringing in more than 10,000 troops from its ally North Korea, according to Ukrainian, South Korean and U.S. assessments. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied their presence.

“To sustain even the very slow advance in Ukraine, Russia has been forced to ignore the months-long occupation of part of its own territory by Ukrainian forces,” British security expert Ruth Deyermond said.

“Taking a ‘nothing to see here’ attitude to the loss of its own land is not what great powers do, particularly one so preoccupied with the idea of state sovereignty.”

Deyermond, in a long thread posted on X, suggested Putin’s efforts to portray Russia as a leading world power were also undermined by the toppling of its chief Middle East ally, former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and its increasing dependence on China.

Putin, the longest-serving ruler of Russia since Josef Stalin, said on Dec. 19 that under his leadership the country had moved back from “the edge of the abyss” and rebuffed threats to its sovereignty.

With hindsight, he said, he should not have waited until February 2022 before launching his “special military operation” in Ukraine, the term he still uses for the full-scale invasion of Russia’s neighbour.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Moscow:

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said his main aim in Ukraine after 30 months of fighting was to capture the eastern Donbas area — and claimed that Ukraine’s Kursk counter-offensive had made that easier.

Putin was speaking a day after Russia attacked Ukraine’s western Lviv region with deadly strikes, and after recent advances by Moscow’s forces in the Donbas.

Since the start of its offensive in February 2022 when it failed to capture the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Russia has adapted its aims, concentrating instead on trying to conquer eastern Ukraine.

While Ukraine’s surprise push into Russia’s Kursk region last month caught Russian forces off-guard, Putin stressed that the move had failed to slow Moscow’s advance in occupied Ukraine.

“The aim of the enemy (in Kursk) was to force us to worry, hustle, divert troops and to stop our offensive in key areas, especially in the Donbas, the liberation of which is our main primary objective,” Putin said at a forum in Vladivostok, in Russia’s far east.

Russia claims as its own the eastern Donetsk region and three other Ukrainian regions.

Moscow has advanced strongly this summer and its troops are now around a dozen kilometres from the city of Pokrovsk — a key logistics hub in east Ukraine from where thousands have now fled.

Putin said that by sending “quite well-prepared units” into Kursk, Ukraine had made Moscow’s advance in Donbas quicker.

“The enemy weakened itself in key areas, our army has accelerated its offensive operations,” he argued.

‘Holy duty’

Putin also claimed that Moscow’s army has begun to push out Ukrainian forces from the Kursk region, where Kyiv’s troops have held on to towns and villages for almost a month.

“Our armed forces have stabilised the situation and started gradually squeezing (the enemy) out from our territory,” Putin said.

It was not possible to verify those claims.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted on Thursday that Ukraine was “maintaining the defined lines” in the Kursk region.

Russia did not mount a large-scale response in the first days of the incursion, which became the largest on Russian soil since World War II.

Putin has since played down the significance of the Ukrainian attack but has hardened his rhetoric in recent days.

“It is the holy duty of the Russian army to do everything to throw out the enemy from this territory and to protect our citizens,” he said on Thursday.

Earlier this week, Zelensky told US TV channel NBC that Ukraine would hold on to the territory captured in the Kursk region.

Zelensky has previously said that one of Kyiv’s “goals” in Kursk was to show Russians “what is more important to him (Putin): occupation of the territories of Ukraine or the protection of his population”.

Kyiv has also said that it wants to force Moscow into “fair” negotiations.

Aborted deal

While Russian officials have rushed in recent weeks to say that the Kursk incursion makes any talks with Ukraine impossible, Putin appeared to roll back those statements.

Russia was ready to talk, he said — but on the basis of an aborted deal reached in Istanbul in 2022, the details of which were never made public by either side.

But Putin has repeatedly said that Moscow can only negotiate with Ukraine if Kyiv surrenders four of its regions — Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

“Are we ready to negotiate with them? We have never refused to do so,” Putin said on Thursday.

“But not on the basis of some ephemeral demands, but on the basis of those documents that were agreed and actually initialled in Istanbul,” he added.

The Kremlin has claimed Russia and Ukraine were on the verge of a deal in the spring of 2022, shortly after Moscow launched its offensive in Ukraine.

On Thursday, both sides reported fresh casualties near the frontlines.

In Ukraine’s Donetsk region, a 74-year-old man died when a Russian shell hit his home in the town of Kostyantynivka, the regional prosecutor’s office said, posting a photo of a destroyed building.

Ukrainian shelling killed a man in Russia’s Belgorod border region, the region’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 12 replaced Sergei Shoigu as Defence Minister in a Cabinet shakeup that comes as he begins his fifth term in office.

In line with Russian law, the entire Russian Cabinet resigned on Tuesday following Mr. Putin’s glittering inauguration in the Kremlin, and most members have been widely expected to keep their jobs, while Mr. Shoigu’s fate had appeared uncertain.

Mr. Putin signed a decree on Sunday appointing Mr. Shoigu as secretary of Russia’s Security Council, the Kremlin said. The appointment was announced shortly after Mr. Putin proposed Andrei Belousov to become the country’s Defence Minister in place of Mr. Shoigu.

The announcement of Mr. Shoigu’s new role came as 13 people were reported dead and 20 more wounded in Russia’s border city of Belgorod, where a 10-story apartment building partially collapsed after what Russian officials said was Ukrainian shelling. Ukraine has not commented on the incident.

Mr. Belousov’s candidacy will need to be approved by Russia’s Upper House in parliament, the Federation Council. It reported on Sunday that Mr. Putin introduced proposals for other Cabinet positions as well but Mr. Shoigu is the only Minister on that list who is being replaced. Several other new candidates for Federal Ministers were proposed on Saturday by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, reappointed by Mr. Putin on Friday.

Mr. Shoigu’s deputy, Timur Ivanov, was arrested last month on bribery charges and was ordered to remain in custody pending an official investigation. The arrest of Mr. Ivanov was widely interpreted as an attack on Mr. Shoigu and a possible precursor of his dismissal, despite his close personal ties with Mr. Putin.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday that Mr. Putin had decided to give the Defence Minister role to a civilian because the Ministry should be “open to innovation and cutting-edge ideas.” He also said the increasing defence Budget “must fit into the country’s wider economy,” and Mr. Belousov, who until recently served as the first Deputy Prime Minister, is the right fit for the job.

Mr. Belousov, 65, held leading positions in the finances and economic department of the Prime Minister’s office and the Ministry of Economic Development. In 2013, he was appointed an adviser to Mr. Putin and seven years later, in January 2020, he became first deputy Prime Minister.

Mr. Peskov assured that the reshuffle will not affect “the military aspect,” which “has always been the prerogative of the Chief of General Staff,” and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, who currently serves in this position, will continue his work.

Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said in an online commentary that Mr. Shoigu’s new appointment to Russia’s Security Council showed that the Russian leader viewed the institution as “a reservoir” for his “‘former’ key figures — people who he cannot in any way let go, but does not have a place for.”

Figures such as former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have also been appointed to the security council. Mr. Medvedev has served as the body’s deputy chairman since 2020.

Mr. Shoigu was appointed to the Security Council instead of Nikolai Patrushev, Mr. Putin’s long-term ally. Mr. Peskov said Sunday that Mr. Patrushev is taking on another role, and promised to reveal details in the coming days.

Mr. Shoigu has been widely seen as a key figure in Mr. Putin’s decision to send Russian troops into Ukraine. Russia had expected the operation to quickly overwhelm Ukraine’s much smaller and less-equipped army and for Ukrainians to broadly welcome Russian troops.

Instead, the conflict galvanised Ukraine to mount an intense defence, dealing the Russian army humiliating blows, including the retreat from an attempt to take the capital, Kyiv, and a counteroffensive that drove Moscow’s forces out of the Kharkiv region.

Before he was named Defence Minister in 2012, Mr. Shoigu spent more than 20 years directing markedly different work: In 1991, he was appointed head of the Russian Rescue Corps disaster-response agency, which eventually became the Ministry of Emergency Situations. He became highly visible in the post. The job also allowed him to be named a general even though he had no military service behind him as the rescue corps absorbed the militarised Civil Defence Troops.

Mr. Shoigu does not wield the same kind of power as Mr. Patrushev, who has long been the country’s top security official. But the position he will take — the same position that Patrushev worked to transform from a minor bureaucratic role to a place of sizable influence — will still carry some authority, according to Mark Galeotti, head of the Mayak Intelligence consultancy.

High-level security materials intended for the President’s eyes will still pass through the Security Council Secretariat, even with changes at the top. “You can’t just institutionally turn around a bureaucracy and how it works overnight,” he said.

Thousands of civilians have fled Russia’s renewed ground offensive in Ukraine’s northeast that has targeted towns and villages with a barrage of artillery and mortar shelling, officials said Sunday.

The intense battles have forced at least one Ukrainian unit to withdraw in the Kharkiv region, capitulating more land to Russian forces across less defended settlements in the so-called contested gray zone along the Russian border.

By Sunday afternoon, the town of Vovchansk, among the largest in the northeast with a prewar population of 17,000, emerged as a focal point in the battle.

Volodymyr Tymoshko, the head of the Kharkiv regional police, said that Russian forces were on the outskirts of the town and approaching from three directions.

An AP team, positioned in a nearby village, saw plumes of smoke rising from the town as Russian forces hurled shells. Evacuation teams worked nonstop throughout the day to take residents, most of whom were older, out of harm’s way.

At least 4,000 civilians have fled the Kharkiv region since Friday, when Moscow’s forces launched the operation, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said in a social media statement. Heavy fighting raged Sunday along the northeast front line, where Russian forces attacked 27 settlements in the past 24 hours, he said.

Analysts say the Russian push is designed to exploit ammunition shortages before promised Western supplies can reach the front line.

Ukrainian soldiers said the Kremlin is using the usual Russian tactic of launching a disproportionate amount of fire and infantry assaults to exhaust Ukrainian troops and firepower. By intensifying battles in what was previously a static patch of the front line, Russian forces threaten to pin down Ukrainian forces in the northeast, while carrying out intense battles farther south where Moscow is also gaining ground.

It comes after Russia stepped up attacks in March targeting energy infrastructure and settlements, which analysts predicted were a concerted effort to shape conditions for an offensive.

The Russian Defence Ministry said Sunday that its forces had captured four villages on the border along Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, in addition to five villages reported to have been seized on Saturday. These areas were likely poorly fortified because of the dynamic fighting and constant heavy shelling, easing a Russian advance.

Ukraine’s leadership hasn’t confirmed Moscow’s gains. But Tymoshko, the head of the Kharkiv regional police, said that Strilecha, Pylna and Borsivika were under Russian occupation, and it was from their direction they were bringing in infantry to stage attacks in other embattled villages of Hlyboke and Lukiantsi.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the country would be ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty was threatened. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Russia remains in a state of combat readiness and is fully ready for a nuclear war, but not “everything is rushing to it” at present, President Vladimir Putin said in remarks published on March 13.

In an interview with state media, Mr. Putin, who launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is nearly certain to win the March 15 to 17 presidential election, said Russia would be ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty was threatened. “From a military-technical point of view, we are, of course, ready,” Mr. Putin told Rossiya-1 television and news agency RIA in response to a question on whether the country was ready for a nuclear war.

He said the United States understands that if it deploys American troops on Russian territory — or to Ukraine — Russia would treat the move as an intervention. “(In the United States) there are enough specialists in the field of Russian-American relations and in the field of strategic restraint,” Mr. Putin said, adding, “Therefore, I don’t think that here everything is rushing to it (nuclear confrontation), but we are ready for this.”

Kremlin’s nuclear doctrine

Mr. Putin reiterated that the use of nuclear weapons was spelt out in the Kremlin’s nuclear doctrine, its policy setting out the circumstances in which Russia might use its weapons. “Weapons exist in order to use them,” Putin said. “We have our own principles.”

If the United States conducted nuclear tests, Russia might do the same, he added in the wide-ranging interview. “It’s not necessary … we still need to think about it, but I don’t rule out that we can do the same.”

However, Mr. Putin said Russia had never faced a need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, where the conflict has raged since February 2022. “Why do we need to use weapons of mass destruction? There has never been such a need.”

Workers carry the coffin and a portrait of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny out of the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 1, 2024. Relatives and supporters of Alexei Navalny are bidding farewell to the opposition leader at a funeral in southeastern Moscow, following a battle with authorities over the release of his body after his still-unexplained death in an Arctic penal colony.
| Photo Credit: AP

Under a heavy police presence, thousands of people bade farewell on Friday to Alexei Navalny at his funeral in Moscow after his still-unexplained death two weeks ago in an Arctic penal colony.

The service followed a battle with authorities over the release of the body of President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic. His supporters said several churches in Moscow refused to hold the funeral for the man who crusaded against official corruption and organised big protests. Many Western leaders blamed the death on the Russian leader, an accusation the Kremlin angrily rejected.

Mr. Navalny’s team eventually got permission from the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, which was encircled by crowd-control barriers on Friday.

As his coffin was removed from the hearse and taken inside the church, the crowd waiting outside broke into respectful applause and then chanted: “Navalny! Navalny!” Some also shouted, “You weren’t afraid, neither are we!” and later “No to war!”

Western diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador Lynn Tracy, were among those who attended, along with presidential hopefuls Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova. Both wanted to run against Mr. Putin in the upcoming presidential elections and opposed his war in Ukraine; neither was allowed on the ballot.

A photo from inside the church showed an open casket with Mr. Navalny’s body covered with red and white flowers, and his mother sitting beside it holding a candle.

Mr. Navalny’s father was also present, but it was not clear who else in his family attended. His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, just two days ago addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg in France; his daughter is a student at the Stanford University, and the whereabouts of his son are unknown.

The politician’s closest associates have left Russia under pressure and watched the funeral, which was streamed live on his YouTube channel, from abroad.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged those gathering in Moscow and other places not to break the law, saying any “unauthorised (mass) gatherings” are violations.

“Those people who follow what is happening, it is of course obvious to them that this man is a hero of our country, whom we will not forget,” said Nadezhda Ivanova, a Kaliningrad resident who was outside the church with other supporters. “What was done to him is incredibly difficult to accept and get through it.”

After the short funeral, a crowd of thousands marched from the church to the nearby Borisovskoye Cemetery, where the police were also out in force for the burial.

With the casket open, Mr. Navalny’s parents and others stroked and kissed his body. Meanwhile, a large crowd of supporters gathered at the gates of the cemetery, chanting: “Let us in to say say goodbye!”

The coffin was then lowered into the ground, allies said.

Mr. Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, spent eight days trying to get authorities to release the body following his February 16 death at Penal Colony No. 3 in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 km northeast of Moscow.

Even on Friday itself, the morgue where the body was being held delayed its release, according to Ivan Zhdanov, Mr. Navalny’s close ally and director of his Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Authorities originally said they could not turn over the body because they needed to conduct post-mortem tests. Ms. Navalnaya made a video appeal to Mr. Putin to release it so she could bury her son with dignity.

At least one funeral director said he had been “forbidden” to work with Navalny’s supporters, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on social media. They also struggled to find a hearse.

“Unknown people are calling up people and threatening them not to take Mr. Alexei’s body anywhere,” Ms. Yarmysh said Thursday.

Russian authorities still have not announced the cause of death for Mr. Navalny, who was 47.

Mr. Navalny had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow to face certain arrest after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.

His Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his regional offices were designated as “extremist organisations” by the Russian government that same year.

His widow accused Mr. Putin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin of trying to block a public funeral.

“We don’t want any special treatment — just to give people the opportunity to say farewell to Alexei in a normal way,” Yulia Navalnaya wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. In a speech to European lawmakers on Wednesday, she also expressed fears that police might interfere with the gathering or would “arrest those who have come to say goodbye to my husband.”

Moscow authorities refused permission for a separate memorial event for Mr. Navalny and slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on Friday, citing COVID-19 restrictions, according to politician Yekaterina Duntsova said. Nemtsov, a 55-year-old former deputy Prime Minister, was shot to death as he walked on a bridge adjacent to the Kremlin on the night of February 27, 2015.

Ms. Yarmysh also urged Navalny’s supporters around the world to lay flowers in his honor on Friday.

“Everyone who knew Alexei says what a cheerful, courageous and honest person he was,” Ms. Yarmysh said Thursday. “But the greater truth is that even if you never met Alexei, you knew what he was like, too. You shared his investigations, you went to rallies with him, you read his posts from prison. His example showed many people what to do when even when things were scary and difficult.”