Russia’s brutal, illegal war on Ukraine is lumbering into its fourth year, yet Europe still hasn’t used all its leverage against Moscow. Despite far-reaching cutbacks that have transformed global energy markets—and the European Union’s pledge to terminate all energy deals with Russia by 2027—the continent still maintains multifarious links to the Russian energy sector.

Russia launched a barrage of drones in an overnight attack on Ukraine on Friday, killing one civilian and injuring four others in the Kyiv region, the military and regional officials said.

Under Vladimir Putin's orders, Russia and China will work together on AI development, and this could further power Moscow's war.

Even while at war, Ukraine piped Russian gas to Europe. Moscow earned an estimated $5 billion in 2024, while Ukraine raked in up to $1 billion in fees.

Vladimir Putin assured Russia he was "certain that everything will be fine" in his New Year's Eve address on Tuesday, as the nation heads toward its fourth year of war in Ukraine in 2025.

Hoping to bolster the resolve of a nation whose heart “is covered in scars” after more than 1,000 days of unrelenting Russian assaults, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in his New Year’s address on Wednesday that he believed the United States would continue to stand with Kyiv in “compelling Russia into a just peace.”

Russian forces are advancing in the east, slowly but surely, and they are shrinking Ukraine’s partial hold of the border region of Kursk

Russia’s share of the EU pipeline natural gas market dropped sharply to about 8% in 2023, according to data from the EU Commission. The Ukrainian transit route served EU members Austria and Slovakia, which long got the bulk of their natural gas from Russia but have recently scrambled to diversify supplies.

It was Carter who called for that boycott — a Cold War power play intended to express America’s disdain for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In his 1980 State of the Union Address, Carter said the invasion “could pose the most serious threat to world peace since the second World War.”