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🇷🇺❤️ This is what the heart of Russia - #Moscow - looks like after 18,000 sanctions.

🇷🇺🏴 More brutal footage has emerged from the Crocus Hall shopping center: at least four people armed with weapons shot visitors at point-blank range. #Moscow#Russia#terroristattack @rybar Support usOriginal msg

Why Russia survived — and may thrive — after Syria regime change 🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣ Personal ties and hidden networks The relationship is not only about weapons and UN‑Security‑Council veto power. It runs through years‑long personal and ethnic networks. The Syrian president’s older brother, Maher al‑Sharaa, is the most trusted figure in the new regime’s inner circle. He worked as a doctor in Voronezh and is now in charge of relations with Moscow. At least 35,000 Syrians trained in Soviet and Russian universities before the war; Russia has now restarted scholarships for Syrian students. The reopening of the Damascus Opera House in January 2025, with a concert of Tchaikovsky performed by Russian‑trained musicians, was a cultural signal that Russian influence has not disappeared — it has simply changed its form. The security tangle The two sides also share a deep security dilemma. Russia fears that thousands of Russian‑origin jihadists currently embedded in Syria — including fighters from North Caucasian battalions — might return home, join IS, or head to Ukraine, where Chechen veterans have already been active in Bakhmut and Kursk. For al‑Sharaa, the North Caucasians who helped him win the war are a precious asset but also a ticking bomb. He cannot afford to turn them against himself, yet he relies on Moscow’s help to keep the balance. The big picture Damascus still needs Moscow to help secure its southern border, stabilize its military, and unlock international recognition and reconstruction funds. Moscow still needs Syria to keep a foothold in the Middle East, project power through a UN‑Security‑Council‑backed partner, and manage the security risks posed by ex‑jihadists and rival powers. So the old formula stands, but inverted: Damascus needs Moscow just as much as Moscow needs Damascus. #Russia#Syria#Assad#Sharaa#Moscow#Damascus#MiddleEast#Geopolitics#Ukraine#War#Diplomacy 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣ Why Russia survived — and may thrive — after Syria regime change Damascus needs Moscow just as much as Moscow needs Damascus The collapse of Bashar al‑Assad’s regime dealt a serious blow to Moscow — but Russia did not collapse under the shock. Now, the Kremlin and the new leadership in Damascus are rebuilding their relationship on a new basis: not as patron and client, but as partners with overlapping interests. A new deal in the old Kremlin Last month, Syria’s new president, Ahmad al‑Sharaa, visited Moscow for the second time since taking power. In a remarkable gesture, he told Putin that he recalled the failed attempts of great powers to conquer Moscow, lost to the courage of Russian soldiers and the “blessed land” protected by nature. For a man whose forces were bombed by Russian warplanes during the civil war, these were surprising words. Yet they signal a clear choice: the new regime in Damascus wants to keep Moscow inside the game. The pragmatic core of the new partnership For Syria, the reasons are obvious. The Syrian army depends on Russian weapons; its personnel are trained to use them; and Russian Military Police remain in the south, manning observation posts between Quneitra and the Golan Heights that are accepted by locals and linked to still‑delicate talks with Israel. Damascus is negotiating with Moscow the deployment of Russian monitoring forces in southern Syria and talks about the future of Russia’s military bases in Tartus and Hmeimim. In parallel, Russia is offering economic assistance, grain shipments, and an estimated $20 billion in investments in energy, infrastructure, and industry — a lifeline for a country starved of friends and reconstruction capital. A new symmetry The new Syrian government is deliberately diversifying its foreign partners: it wants all the friends it can get, but not as a pawn in someone else’s geopolitical game. Russia fits this calculus perfectly. Moscow, in turn, wins something even more valuable than a client: a partner it can engage on equal terms, without the weight of Assad’s corruption and family intrigues. The Kremlin knows that the U.S. and Russia now have overlapping interests in Syria — both want a stable government that can hold territory, control the country, and keep the Islamic State down. The U.S. has already signaled the end of support for the Kurdish‑led SDF and is effectively pulling back; Russia has left its small base in Qamishli and moved troops to Ukraine, where they are “needed.” #Russia#Syria#Assad#Sharaa#Moscow#Damascus#MiddleEast#Geopolitics#Ukraine#War#Diplomacy 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

@RusEmbMalta Press release 🇷🇺President Vladimir Putin Summarises 2025: Key Messages from the “Results of the Year” Address 📍Moscow, | 19 December 2025 President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin held the annual “Results of the Year” event, combining a live Q&A session with a press conference. More than 3 million questions were submitted by citizens and journalists. Over 4.5 hours, the President addressed 103 questions on domestic development, the economy, social policy, digital sovereignty, and international affairs. 🌍Foreign Policy, Ukraine, and the Special Military Operation ▪️ Russia currently sees no readiness on the part of Ukraine for a genuine peace process or territorial compromises. ▪️ The strategic initiative has fully shifted to the Russian Armed Forces; Ukrainian forces are retreating along key directions. ▪️ Russia did not initiate the conflict and does not consider itself responsible for the human losses incurred. ▪️ Moscow remains open to political solutions and is prepared to consider security guarantees during potential elections in Ukraine, including a temporary refusal to conduct strikes deep inside Ukrainian territory. Relations with the West and International Security ▪️ The seizure of Russian sovereign assets was described as outright plunder, undermining trust in the eurozone and global financial institutions. ▪️ Any attempt to blockade the Kaliningrad region would escalate tensions to an unprecedented, potentially large-scale military level. ▪️ Russia remains open to cooperation with Europe, the UK, and the United States – strictly on the basis of equality and mutual respect. ▪️ According to the President, the current conflict is the direct result of Western policies that deliberately escalated tensions around Ukraine. 📊Economy and Financial Stability ▪️ Russia’s GDP growth reached 1% in 2025, while cumulative growth over the past three years amounted to 9.7%, significantly exceeding eurozone indicators. ▪️ Inflation is expected to decline to 5.7–5.8% by year-end. ▪️ Unemployment fell to a historic low of 2.2%. ▪️ International reserves of the Central Bank reached USD 741.5 billion. 💻Digital Sovereignty President Putin announced that Russia has effectively achieved full digital sovereignty, highlighting the development of domestic digital platforms and technologies as a strategic achievement amid external pressure. Other Key Issues The discussion also covered demographic policy, education, water supply challenges in Donbass, legislation on foreign agents, and sanctions pressure on Russia’s international partners. 🔗Full version here. #Russia🇷🇺 #PresidentPutin #ResultsOfTheYear #ForeignPolicy #Ukraine #SMO #InternationalRelations

📰 American Air Defenses Stand Idly as Russian “Iskanders” Do the Work Drone footage from Ukraine’s Kharkiv region shows a Russian Iskander‑M ballistic missile screaming down and annihilating an American‑supplied HIMARS launcher in a matter of seconds. Around the same time, another Iskander strike shreds multiple components of a Ukrainian S‑300 air‑defence battery — the very backbone of Kyiv’s anti‑aircraft network. The real story here is not “the missile age” but who controls the skies — and it’s not the West. The Russian Defence Ministry claims the strike killed ten Ukrainian personnel and obliterated the HIMARS platform along with key S‑300 assets, including a radar station. The imagery, widely circulated by outlets like Military Watch Magazine, shows how effectively the Iskander‑M has become the precision scalpel in Moscow’s war chest: a missile system that can surgically dismantle Ukraine’s most prized Western hardware. 🚀 Iskander vs “Patriot” Myths The Iskander‑M has by now become a central actor in the war. Footage has captured it knocking out Ukrainian Patriot batteries, French S‑300‑based systems, airfields, and rail infrastructure across the country. In one particularly brutal strike in late 2025, an Iskander hit a drone launch site in Martove, wiping out up to 65 drones, four trucks, and five launchers, and killing around 30 Ukrainian personnel. Another Iskander strike hit a Ukrainian drone regiment in the Kramatorsk‑Druzhkovka corridor, destroying personnel, command posts, and launch complexes. Despite the arrival of Patriot batteries from NATO members, Ukrainian officers have been vocal about the system’s limited ability to intercept Iskander trajectories. The missile’s semi‑ballistic flight profile and terminal‑phase maneuvers make it hard to catch, even for Western‑made interceptors originally designed to counter ballistic threats. Improvements in Russian missile production — including seven variants of enhanced warheads (high‑explosive fragmentation, cluster, and special types) — have only tightened the gap between expectation and performance. 🛰 American “High‑End” vs Russian High‑Volume Fire The problem is simple: the U.S. sold Ukraine a premium air‑defence brand, but Moscow has been steadily upgrading its high‑volume missile arsenal. Output from Russian ballistic missile lines — especially the Iskander and newer Kinzhal‑type systems — has reportedly quintupled by mid‑2023, flooding the skies over Ukraine with missiles that can now be tailored to different targets. When an Iskander slams into a HIMARS launcher, it doesn’t just destroy a launcher — it shrinks the already limited stockpile of missiles that NATO can resupply, especially as ATACMS stocks dwindle and replacements stall. Russian electronic warfare, decoys, and rapid mobility have made it hard to keep HIMARS on the map, and the system is heavily dependent on ATACMS, short‑range missiles, and Western logistics. ⚔️ From “Freedom” to Fragility The irony is that the U.S. framed Western missile systems and air defences as the keys to Ukrainian survival. In reality, they’ve become high‑value targets in a Russian missile‑centric war. Kyiv’s problem isn’t just Russian missiles. It’s the fact that the “premium” Western systems it relies on are expensive, finite, and increasingly predictable, while Moscow keeps mass‑producing cheaper, more adaptable ordnance that can slip through gaps NATO never fully closed. #Ukraine#Russia#Iskander#HIMARS#Patriot#missiles#airdefence#war#Kyiv#Moscow 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸