January 11, 2025 Ukraine and the World – Against russia’s Aggression. Sanctions in Action

Ukraine has received the first EUR 3 billion from the European Union as part of a $50 billion G7 loan, which will be repaid with proceeds from the rf's frozen assets.

In 2025, Norway will provide Ukraine with the largest military aid in its history, worth more than EUR 2 billion.

At the Ramstein meeting, Minister of Defence of Canada Bill Blair announced the allocation of 440 million Canadian dollars in military aid to Ukraine.

Minister of Defence of the FRG Boris Pistorius has announced the plans to provide Ukraine with missiles for the IRIS-T air defense system in the near future. He has also confirmed that his Ministry had prepared a list of military materials and systems that could be supplied to Ukraine in case of additional funding.

In the first half of 2025, Germany is going to provide Ukraine with significant military aid packages, which will 22 Leopard 1 main battle tanks, 25 Marder infantry fighting vehicles, and another Iris-T SLM/SLS air defense system, 16 howitzers, 2 additional Patriot launchers, seven Gepard anti-aircraft guns with 120,000 rounds of ammunition, 3,500 armed drones from Helsing, 6 armed Sea-King helicopters, 250,000 artillery rounds of ammunition, and several other weapons and military equipment.

Minister of National Defence of Poland Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz has said that his country is preparing a new package of military aid to Ukraine. At the same time, he and Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur hope that meetings of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (Ramstein format) will continue under the new U.S. administration.

All in all, at the Ukraine Defence Contact Group meeting on January 9, Ukraine reached agreements on additional support packages totalling $2 billion.

Last year, Ukraine managed to attract $41.7 billion in external financing, and since the beginning of the war, it has attracted a total of $115 billion 200 million from partners.

Spain will soon provide Ukraine with 10 power generators, as well as new training for the Armed Forces and a new humanitarian aid program for Ukrainian families that will begin on January 12.

Ukrainian educational institutions, government agencies, central and regional authorities will be able to use Microsoft cloud products free of charge until the end of 2025.

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The United States is imposing some of the toughest sanctions on the russian oil industry. The sanctions will apply to more than 180 tankers transporting russian oil, as well as russian marine insurance providers. These include sanctions against two large oil companies, “gazpromneft” and “surgutneftegaz”, as well as ship insurance companies “ingosstrakh” and “alpha insurance”. The largest russian shipping company, “sovcomflot”, and 69 of its vessels will also be sanctioned.

Indian companies expect serious disruptions in the supply of russian oil due to Washington's new sanctions. Indian oil refiners will have to look for raw materials in the Middle East and the United States.

Shares of russian oil companies fell sharply at the moscow exchange on Friday in anticipation of the Joe Biden administration's “farewell” sanctions, which will affect hundreds of tankers of the kremlin's “shadow” fleet, as well as insurance companies that service the sale of russian barrels. “surguneftegaz”'s shares fell by 2.3%, “gazpromneft”'s – by 2.5%, and “rosneft”'s – by 2%. In total, the three companies, which account for two-thirds of all oil production in the rf, lost almost 200 billion rubles in capitalization, or $1.95 billion in less than six hours of trading.

President Joe Biden's administration intends to introduce additional export controls to prevent the supply of chips that power artificial intelligence (AI) to countries such as the rf and China. Three levels of authorization are to be introduced, in particular, to prevent advanced technologies from circumventing restrictions. The USA wants to restrict the sale of chips used in data centers for AI at the level of both, countries and companies.

The Government of Japan has decided to impose sanctions against 11 individuals, 51 legal entities, and 3 banks from the rf, as well as dozens of companies and one individual from eight countries. Tokyo is also imposing export restrictions on 22 russian organizations. Banned is also the export to russia of 335 types of goods, including parts for special equipment, small motorcycles and tools. The measures also provide for the freezing of the assets of pavel marinichev, CEO of alrosa, vladimir artyakov, first deputy CEO of rostec, sergey petrov, head of psv technologies, dmitry nikulin, vice president of tsmrbank, and others if they are found. The sanctions include the moscow institute of heat engineering, the research and development institute of mechanical engineering, the aleksin chemical plant, the “turbine” design bureau, the all-russian research institute of radio engineering, the “vympel” interstate joint stock corporation, the mari machine-building plant, the “granit” enterprise, which is part of the “almaz-antey” concern, the klimovsk specialized ammunition plant, the kazan and tambov powder plants, and the institute of radio navigation, etc. The sanctions also targeted tsmrbank, rfk bank, and timer bank.

“russian casualties in Ukraine now surpassed two-thirds of the total strength of the russian military at the start of putin’s war of choice. In November 2024 alone, russia lost nearly 1,500 troops a day”, said U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Minister of Defence of the FRG Boris Pistorius has warned that the threat of russia’s hybrid attacks against Western countries in the Baltic Sea remains constant.

Minister of National Defence of Poland Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysh does not rule out the possibility of russia’s attack on his country.

Prime Minister of Italy Giorgia Meloni believes that NATO needs to pay greater attention to Africa and the Global South, as russia may increase its presence in the east of Libya after the fall of the regime in Syria.

The new Syrian authorities refuse to allow a russian evacuation ship to enter the port of Tartus, where the only foreign base of the russian navy is located.

Lithuanian culture should be preserved in kaliningrad region, as the region has historically been part of Lithuania Minor, President of Lithuania Gitanas Nausėda said. “No matter how hard russia tries, Karaliaučius will never become kaliningrad!”

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has tightened its recommendations on the use of russia’s airspace. The regulator has advised airlines operating flights to the EU not to use the airspace of five regions of the rf until the end of July 2025. EASA has urged carriers to refrain from flying “at all levels” in russias airspace “west of the 60th meridian of east longitude”. This includes flights to moscow, st. petersburg, yekaterinburg, rostov-on-don and samara, where russian air defense poses a risk.

The management of the vostochnyi port in nakhodka asked putin to ensure that the terminal's coal loading in 2025 is at least 35 million tons, or by 40% higher than last year. The document says that the $800 million investment in the modernization and expansion of capacities, which was made in accordance with the approved state strategy for the development of the industry, was “virtually unclaimed”. In 2024, coal transshipment through the port amounted to 25 million tons, “which is by 1.3 million tons less than the level achieved before the start of the modernization”. At the same time, in 2025, the volume of transportation to the terminal is expected to further decline, which will lead to deterioration in the company's economic performance and a decrease in tax payments to the budget.

russian railways (rzhd) has experienced a sharp decline in freight traffic for the third year in a row amid sanctions that have hit exports and difficulties in managing train traffic. In 2024, the load on the russian railways network fell by 4.1% to 1.181 billion tons, the lowest level in recent years. rzhd transported by 51 million tons less cargo, failing the initial plan (1.265 billion tons) by almost 7%, while the rate of decline in traffic was higher than in the first and second years of the war taken together (-3.7% in 2022, -0.1% in 2023). Transportation of the main cargo, coal, dropped by 5.4%, of ferrous metals – by 9.2%, of timber – by 16.5% (due to the EU embargo), and of grain – by 4.6%.

The amount of cash in circulation in russia in 2024 may show the weakest growth in nine years – 18.44 trillion rubles, adding 116.9 billion rubles over the year, only 0.6%. This is several times lower than in previous years.

New and used cars will sharply rise in price in the rf in 2025 – by 30-50%, with price growth intensifying significantly in the second half of the year. The situation in the car market will be aggravated by the weakening of the ruble against the dollar and the yuan, an increase in the utilization fee, and rising logistics and customs costs for manufacturers.

russians started going to the cinema less during the New Year holidays. From January 1 to January 8, 12.7 million russians visited cinemas, compared to 14.8 million in 2024. Thus, cinemas lost 13% of their viewers. For comparison, in the pre-covid year of 2020, 16.5 million russians preferred this type of leisure during Christmas holidays. And in early January 2021, when cinemas operated with restrictions on occupancy rates of 25 to 50% due to the pandemic, 11.6 million people visited them. Total box office receipts in the first eight days of 2025 amounted to 6.2 billion rubles, up 0.4 billion year-on-year. The figure increased due to a sharp rise in ticket prices.

The council of the eurasian economic commission has extended by five years the service life of russian lifts, which are due for replacement by February 15, 2025. In total, there are 581 thousand lifts in russia, 72 thousand of which have reached the standard service life of 25 years. The russian lift association previously reported that the replacement of about half of the lifts is not included in the overhaul plan and is not funded.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Kęstutis Budrys is convinced that there will be no fair and free elections in the rb in the near future.

On the night of January 9-10, Telegram, YouTube, Twitch, and Discord worked intermittently in the rb. Instagram, Viber, and TikTok also had problems. Experts say that there were preparations for the announced by lukashenko shutdown of the Internet in the country before the elections.

The court of the central district of minsk has included the petition website petitions.bу and its social networks: Instagram, Facebook, Telegram and the Telegram chat “Portal Commentators Club” into the list of “extremist” materials. The ministry of information of the rb has stated that the site allegedly “collected signatures for protest petitions”, published petitions containing information discrediting the legislature of the rb, the activities of the parliament and the central election commission, and called to invalidate the presidential election.

On Christmas Day, the rb’s communists published greeting cards with an image of Jesus Christ with a red flag with a hammer and a sickle. The background is russian military equipment on the military parade and architectural symbols of moscow, including lenin's mausoleum, and the caption reads: “Merry Christmas to all comrades”, adding that “Jesus Christ never supported the exploitation of man by man, but stood for social justice”, effectively equating Christian ideas with communist ideology.