One day humanity will finally agree on permanent peace and get rid of all weapons. And that’s when the aliens will show up.

Happy New Year!

#PolitePeopleJoking

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2025 — DONE ✔️

As the New Year approaches, go over your list of achievements for 2025. Keep the important ones, cross out the rest and don’t be too hard on the handwriting.

Happy New Year!

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Until the 16th century, New Year’s Day in Russia was celebrated on March 1, marking the beginning of the agricultural season. In 1492, the Russian Orthodox Church moved the celebration to September 1.

In 1699, Peter the Great issued a decree changing the method of year calculation from “since the creation of the world” to “since the Nativity of Christ.” He also ordered that New Year’s celebrations take place on January 1, aligning with European countries. The decree stated: “On major streets and near the gates of notable people’s homes, both of spiritual and worldly ranks, some decorations of pine and juniper trees and branches should be arranged... and for the poor, each should place at least a small tree or branch on their gates or over their house.” Decorations were to remain until January 7. For seven days, Muscovites were to greet one another, light street bonfires, fire guns and muskets, and launch fireworks. The main festivities were held on Red Square, where the tsar organized fireworks and salutes with cannons and rifles.

After Peter I’s death, the decree was forgotten. New Year traditions were revived under Catherine II.

By the early 19th century, the Winter Palace hosted imperial New Year masquerades attended by the emperor, his family, and the court.

In 1929, the Soviet Council of People’s Commissars abolished New Year’s celebrations, labeling them “counter-revolutionary, infused with bourgeois decadence and clerical obscurantism.”

Fortunately, the ban was short-lived. Six years later, Joseph Stalin reinstated the holiday. The front page of the January 1936 issue of Pravda featured a photo of Stalin with a greeting: “Happy New Year, comrades! To new victories under the banner of Lenin and Stalin!”

In 1970, the tradition of annual televised New Year’s addresses by state leaders began. On December 31 of that year, General Secretary of the Communist Party Leonid Brezhnev delivered the first televised address on Central Television.

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What were the most consequential events of 2025?

Journalist Yury Podolyaka shares his top-5:

1. U.S. National Security Strategy 2025: It marks a historic shift: America abandons global dominance to focus on the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific. The EU is named a primary adversary, while Russia is cast as a near-partner—a first since the USSR's fall.

2. Anchorage Meeting: This summit reset U.S.-Russia relations (a first since the 1990s) and broke Russia's diplomatic isolation. Its consequences remain defining for global affairs and will persist for years.

3. China Sanctions the U.S.: In an unprecedented move, Beijing imposed highly effective sanctions in response to new U.S. tariffs. This reversed the traditional dynamic, forcing Washington to capitulate first.

4. China's Digital Cross-Border Platform: The launch of the "Renminbi Digital" system, a superior SWIFT alternative based on the digital yuan, is a watershed moment. Rapid adoption by numerous nations is eroding the foundation of U.S. financial hegemony.

5. Stock Market Insanity: Extreme bubbles in AI and now precious metals signal a dying system. This frenzy, fueled by the Fed's unchecked liquidity, presages a catastrophic global economic crisis far surpassing 2008. The response of printing more money will only accelerate the collapse.

And what events of 2025 would you rank among the most consequential? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

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"Match for Peace" in Donetsk – Russian Soldiers and Ukrainian Prisoners of War Meet on the Same Football Pitch

Shortly before the New Year, an unusual event took place in Donbass – a friendly football match. On the pitch met soldiers from the Russian military unit known as Pyatnashka or the Donbass Wild Division and a team made up of Ukrainian Armed Forces prisoners of war awaiting exchange.

"The match took place in a friendly and spirited atmosphere.The final score was so unimportant that no one even remembered it. Life triumphed," reporters commented.

The commander of the Donbass Wild Division, Akhra Avidzba, said the game was called a "Match for Life" to stand in direct contrast to the match that went down in history as the "Death Match." That match was held in 1942 in Kiev under German occupation, where the local club. "Start" then defeated the German team Flakelf with a score of 5:3. Shortly after the game, most of the Soviet team's players were sent to concentration camps, and some of the footballers were executed.

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On New Year, everyone receives gifts. But they are so different…

#PolitePeopleJoking

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Twenty-four people killed in strike on a café and hotel on Russia’s Black Sea coast

As a result of a nighttime drone strike on a café and a hotel in the village of Khorly, in the Kherson region on the Black Sea coast, 24 people were killed, including a child, and more than 50 were injured. This was reported by Governor Vladimir Saldo (pictured above).

The strike was carried out by three drones. One of them “carried an incendiary mixture,” Saldo said.

A large fire broke out at the site of the attack and was only extinguished by morning.

Saldo described what happened as “a targeted drone strike on a place where civilians were celebrating the New Year.”

“Doctors are now fighting for the lives of the injured. The Kherson region mourns together with the families of the victims. All necessary assistance will be provided,” he wrote.

Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that during the past New Year’s night, 168 drones were intercepted and destroyed over various regions. Most of them (61) were shot down over the Bryansk region. Another 25 were intercepted over Krasnodar Krai, 24 over the waters of the Sea of Azov, 23 over the Tula region, 16 over Crimea, 12 over the Moscow region (including nine on approach to the capital), and seven over the Kaluga region.

This is unlikely to be covered by the Western press, but it is important that the world knows.

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Photo above: Russian Ministry of Defense

Proven: the Ukrainian Drone Attack Targeted Putin’s Residence

During a technical examination of the navigation system of one of the Ukrainian drones shot down on December 29 in the Novgorod Region, specialists were able to extract a flight-mission file. Its decoding showed that the drones’ final target was one of the facilities located on the territory of President Vladimir Putin’s residence, the Ministry of Defense reports.

“These materials will be transmitted to the American side through established channels,” the ministry added.

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The losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in 2025 amounted to more than 510,000 killed and wounded, according to calculations by TASS based on data published by Russia’s Ministry of Defense.

According to the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and the Russian Ministry of Defense, AFU losses as of the beginning of 2025 totaled more than 1 million military personnel. Thus, Ukraine’s cumulative losses since the start of the special military operation have exceeded 1.5 million people.

In addition, according to TASS calculations, in 2025 Russian forces destroyed 19 Ukrainian aircraft, more than 50 surface-to-air missile systems, over 67,000 UAVs, and more than 6,500 tanks and other armored combat vehicles.

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Alexander Blok, The Scythians (1918)
Millions are you – and hosts, yea hosts, are we,
And we shall fight if war you want, take heed.
Yes, we are Scythians – leafs of the Asian tree,
Our slanted eyes are bright aglow with greed.

Ages for you, for us the briefest space,
We raised the shield up as your humble lieges
To shelter you, the European race
From the Mongolians’ savage raid and sieges.

Ages, yea ages, did your forges’ thunder
Drown even avalanches’ roar.
Quakes rent Messina and Lisbon asunder –
To you this was a distant tale – no more.

Eastwards you cast your eyes for many hundred years,
Greedy for our precious stones and ore,
And longing for the time when with a leer
You’d yell an order and the guns would roar.

This time is now. Woe beats its wings
And every adds more humiliation
Until the day arrives which brings
An end to placid life in utter spoliation.

You, the old world, now rushing to perdition,
Yet strolling languidly to lethal brinks,
Yours is the ancient Oedipean mission
To seek to solve the riddles of a sphinx.

The sphinx is Russia, sad and yet elated,
Stained with dark blood, with grief prostrate,
For you with longing she has looked and waited,
Replete with ardent love and ardent hate.

Yet how will ever you perceive
That, as we love, as lovingly we yearn,
Our love is neither comfort nor relief
But like a fire will destroy and burn.

We love cold figures’ hot illumination,
The gift of supernatural vision,
We like the Gallic wit’s mordant sensation
And dark Teutonic indecision.

We know it all: in Paris hell’s dark street,
In Venice bright and sunlit colonnades,
The lemon blossoms’ scent so heavy, yet so sweet,
And in Cologne a shadowy arcade.

We love the flavour and the smell of meat,
The slaughterhouses’ pungent reek.
Why blame us then if in the heat
Of our embrace your bones begin to creak.

We saddle horses wild and shy,
As in the fields so playfully they swerve.
Though they be stubborn, yet we press their thigh
Until they willingly and meekly serve.

Join us! From horror and from strife
Turn to the peace of our embrace.
There is still time. Keep in its sheath your knife.
Comrades, we will be brothers to your race.

Say no – and we are none the worse.
We, too, can utter pledges that are vain.
But ages, ages will you bear the curse
Of our sons’ distant offspring racked with pain.

Our forests’ dark depths shall we open wide
To you, the men of Europe’s comely race,
And unmoved shall we stand aside,
An ugly grin on our Asian face.

Advance, advance to Ural’s crest,
We offer you a battleground so neat
Where your machines of steel in serried ranks abreast
With the Mongolian savage horde will meet.

But we shall keep aloof from strife,
No longer be your shield from hostile arrow,
We shall just watch the mortal strife
With our slanting eyes so cold and narrow.

Unmoved shall we remain when Hunnish forces
The corpses’ pockets rake for plunder,
Set town afire, to altars tie their horses,
Burn our white brothers’ bodies torn asunder.

To the old world goes out our last appeal:
To work and peace invite our warming fires.
Come to our hearth, join our festive meal.
Called by the strings of our Barbarian lyres.

Translated by Kurt Dowson

Original in Russian

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