Thousands of protesters in the Slovak capital held banners and chanted slogans on Friday accusing Prime Minister Robert Fico of dragging the country towards Russia after he met President Vladimir Putin last month amid a gas dispute with Ukraine.

High-ranking sources told independent Russian outlet Meduza that Russia's elites are disappointed the Ukraine war didn't end in 2024 and feel fatigue.

In the capital of Transnistria, a Kremlin-backed microstate sandwiched between Moldova and Ukraine, the festive New Year’s lights have gone dark ahead of schedule. This separatist sliver of Moldova will run out of energy in three weeks,

Russia accused Ukraine on Friday of carrying out a missile strike on a supermarket in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Denis Pushilin, who heads the parts of Donetsk region controlled by Russia,

Russia's financial watchdog has rejected a request to remove late opposition leader Alexei Navalny from its list of "terrorists and extremists" even though he is dead, his widow Yulia Navalnaya said on Friday.

After three years of war, strict sanctions, and dwindling oil prices, the odds are stacked against the Kremlin in 2025, a think tank fellow argues.

Every time planned electrical outages are imposed on his village in southern Moldova, 73-year-old retiree Vasili Donici passes the time by solving crosswords and puzzles in a room he illuminates using a small gas lamp.

President-elect Donald Trump says that he is ready to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that the meeting is being arranged, though he gave no timeline for when it might take place. “He wants to meet, and we are setting it up,” Trump told a reporter late Thursday at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Germany charged that a heavily loaded tanker adrift off its northern coast Friday was part of the "shadow fleet" Moscow uses to avoid sanctions on its oil exports. In response, Russia has relied on tankers with opaque ownership or without proper insurance to continue lucrative oil exports.

The US government has imposed fresh sanctions on Russia, targeting its so-called "shadow fleet" in a bid to strike Moscow's primary revenue source amid its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer vowed to stand firmly behind her fiscal plan when asked if she will need to rethink her economic strategy.