President Vladimir Putin told Russians in a New Year’s address that the country will move forward with confidence into 2025, though he made 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 rates are squeezing businesses and home buyers, Putin reassured Russians that their well-being is his top priority.
He framed Russia’s challenges as part of a broader historical mission, drawing on past victories, including its role in the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
Russia, he said, overcame difficulties in the first quarter of the 21st century, achieved key goals and strengthened its unity – a period that exactly coincides with the time of its paramount leader.
“And now, on the threshold of the New Year, we are thinking about the future. We are confident that everything will work out, 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 to each of Russia’s 11 time zones, beginning with Kamchatka and Chukotka in the Far East.
He was speaking exactly 25 years after he first addressed the nation as acting president after Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned on the last day of 1999.
Putin, 72, paid tribute to Russian soldiers fighting in the war in Ukraine, calling them heroes. He said, “We are proud of your courage and bravery. We believe in you.”
He made no specific mention of the battlefield situation or the prospects for an end to the conflict after Donald Trump returns as US President on January 20. Trump has said he would quickly end the war without giving details.
loss in ukraine
In 2024 Russian forces advanced into Ukraine at the fastest pace since 2022, the first year of the war, and took control of about a fifth of the country. But this gain has come at the cost of huge, though unknown, losses in men and equipment.
In 2024, Russia was invaded for the first time since World War II as Ukraine seized part of its western Kursk region in a surprise retaliatory attack on 6 August.
According to Ukrainian, South Korean and US assessments, Russia has not yet removed Ukrainian forces from Kursk despite bringing in more than 10,000 troops from its ally North Korea. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied their presence.
British security expert Ruth Dearmond said, “To maintain the very slow progress in Ukraine, Russia has been forced to ignore the months-long occupation of a portion of its territory by Ukrainian forces.”
“It is not what great powers do, especially those so preoccupied with the idea of state sovereignty, to take a ‘nothing to see here’ attitude to the loss of their territories.”
Deirmond suggested in a lengthy thread posted on Weakened due to increasing dependence.
Putin, Russia’s longest-serving ruler since Joseph Stalin, said on December 19 that under his leadership the country had moved back from “the edge of the abyss” and rejected threats to its sovereignty.
With foresight, he said, they should not have waited until February 2022 before launching their “special military operation” in Ukraine, the term he still uses for a full-scale invasion of Russia’s neighbor.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
