World
Russia’s Brutal War Calculus
Two years of war have remade Russia.
Isolated from the West, it is now more dependent on China. Political repression is reminiscent of the grim days of the Soviet Union.
But Russia is not the economic shambles many in the West predicted when they imposed punishing sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine. Many Russians are pulling down their highest incomes in years.
Russian society has been refashioned in ways that have devastated some and lifted others. While government critics languish in jail and young men die in trenches at the front, other Russians — especially those willing to spout the official line — are feeling more optimistic than ever.
Here is a look at how Russia at war has changed — suffering enormous costs by some metrics but faring better than expected by others.
Daily Life
People fled Russia in droves after the invasion and draft, more than 820,000, although some returned.
Alcoholics were diagnosed in higher numbers after more than a decade of steady declines.
Demand for psychologists increased by more than 60% in the first year of the war.
Traffic to Facebook and Instagram dropped after Russia blocked them, and use of Telegram and secure platforms like VPNs surged.
Travel abroad plummeted from pre-pandemic days.
But people are making higher wages as men deployed to the front reduce the ranks of workers back home.
And Russians are shelling out on new homes, helped by generous government subsidies.
Despite the ways that life has changed, many people say they feel positive about how President Vladimir Putin is doing. His popularity surged as the war began and is now at its highest level in seven years.
Questions remain about how honest people feel they can be in polls, given the risks. And polls have signaled, too, that a substantial number would like the war to end. But Mr. Putin has convinced many that in invading Ukraine, Russia is defending itself against an existential threat from the West.
The Economy
Mr. Putin went into the war with his financial house in order.
Government debt was low. Funds were stashed away. And a team of agile technocrats were on hand to fend off a crisis.
After an initial shock, the Russian system recovered, thanks in part to emergency financial measures, high oil prices and trade with China and India. Moscow also greatly increased state spending.
Collectively, Russia has created its own wartime economy.
Trade with Europe dropped by about 65% after Western sanctions.
Toyotas and VWs, once popular, disappeared from car assembly lines.
But trade with China, India and Turkey boomed.
By last year, Chinese cars made up six of the top 10 car brands in Russia.
The G.D.P. overall was driven up last year by an enormous war-related government stimulus.
Unemployment dropped.
And more than two-thirds of Russians say their economic well-being is the same or better.
But inflation shot up too.
The economy is now in danger of overheating. The mortgage subsidies could be fueling a housing bubble. And the market is still off-kilter in some sectors, with shortages of certain medicines, for example, and dramatic reductions in car production.
If oil prices plunge, Russia will struggle. If the military spending spree ends, all bets are off. Russia can sustain warfare in Ukraine for the foreseeable future, but its long-term economic future is in doubt.
Support for the War
For the moment, at least, the resilient economy has boosted Mr. Putin. And a campaign of propaganda and repression have allowed him to reign virtually unchallenged.
As nationalist songs top the charts — “I am Russian, out of spite to the whole world,” goes one — less attention is being paid to the news. And the government plans to spend $500 million on “patriotic education” this year, including for a goose-stepping “youth army.”
The percentage of people saying the country is moving in the right direction is the highest in decades, 71% last month.
Support for Russian military actions in Ukraine is even higher, though many Russians have indicated that they aren’t comfortable sharing their opinion about the war.
Repression of those opposing the war is widespread.
Treason convictions nearly tripled.
The war has accelerated a crackdown on the L.G.B.T.Q. community.
Soviet-style denunciations are back, as Russians report “unpatriotic” behavior by fellow citizens to the authorities.
Freedom of assembly has been obliterated, with nearly 20,000 Russians detained for their antiwar stance.
Independent journalists have been forced to flee, and many have been declared foreign agents.
Mr. Putin’s best-known critic, Aleksei A. Navalny, died after years of inhumane treatment in prison.
The number of prisoners in Russia has actually decreased dramatically.
But that’s primarily because many were recruited to fight, and often die, in Ukraine.
Blood and Treasure
In the early months of the war, Mr. Putin’s military made grave mistakes, but it has regrouped. Russia fended off a Western-backed Ukrainian counteroffensive and has taken the initiative on the front, buoyed by frozen American aid for Ukraine.
Still, Russia has sustained huge costs to get this far. It is far from controlling the four regions it claims to have annexed, let alone the rest of Ukraine, and Mr. Putin may need to carry out another draft.
He claims he would like to negotiate an end to the war, but skeptics see that as a ploy to undercut Western aid to Ukraine.
Moscow has made increasing gains in recent weeks. It now controls about 18 percent of Ukraine, up from 7 percent before the full-scale invasion.
But its control of Ukraine is down from the 27 percent Russian forces once occupied at their height.
The progress is coming at a higher cost. Military spending has eclipsed social spending at the federal level for the first time in Russia’s 32-year post-Soviet history. It makes up about a third of the national budget.
Some 60,000 Russians have been killed in the fighting, according to U.S. officials.
That’s two Russian soldiers for every square mile taken from Ukraine since the invasion.
The popularity of the war appears to ebb when it comes to support for the draft. Only 36% of Russians support another mobilization to replenish forces.
To replenish its ranks, Russia has been targeting prisons and poorer regions for recruits.
Soldiers in Ukraine are earning roughly three times the average Russian salary — and in many cases more. Compensation to families of soldiers who die in Ukraine can be more than $84,000, more than nine times the average annual Russian salary.
But despite their stated support for the war, many Russians would be happy for it to end. Half of Russians say they want to start peace talks.
People fleeing Russia: Re:Russia
Diagnoses of alcohol dependence in 2022: Rosstat Psychologist demand: Psychodemia, Alter, HeadHunter
Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and VPN use: Mediascope, AppMagic
Foreign travel: Russian Border Service, Association of Tour Operators
Patriotic education: Russian federal budget
Putin’s popularity: Levada Center Trade with Europe: Eurostat
Trade with China, India and Turkey: Bruegel
Russia’s well-being: NORC at the University of Chicago
Inflation: Bank of Russia People saying the country is moving in the right direction: Levada Center
Treason convictions, 2021 compared with 2023: Pervy Otdel, Supreme Court of Russia
Number of prisoners: Russian Ministry of Justice
Control of territory in Ukraine: Institute for the Study of War
Military spending: Russian Ministry of Finance War deaths: U.S. officials
Support for the draft: Russian Field
Support for peace talks: Levada Center
Sources
World
Minnesota braces for what’s next amid immigration arrests and in the wake of Renee Good shooting
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Already shaken by the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration officer, Minnesota’s Twin Cities on Sunday braced for what many expect will be a new normal over the next few weeks as the Department of Homeland Security carries out what it called its largest enforcement operation ever.
Protesters screamed at heavily-armed federal agents and honked car horns, banged on drums and blew whistles in attempts to disrupt their operations in one Minneapolis neighborhood filled with single-family homes.
There was some pushing and several people were hit with chemical spray just before agents banged down the door of one home on Sunday. They later took one man away in handcuffs.
“We’re seeing a lot of immigration enforcement across Minneapolis and across the state, federal agents just swarming around our neighborhoods,” said Jason Chavez, a Minneapolis city councilmember. “They’ve definitely been out here.”
Chavez, the son of Mexican immigrants who represents an area with a growing immigrant population, said he is closely monitoring information from chat groups about where residents are seeing agents operating.
People holding whistles positioned themselves in freezing temperatures on street corners in the neighborhood where 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed Wednesday, watching for any signs of federal agents.
More than 20,000 people have taken part in a variety of trainings to become “observers” of enforcement activities in Minnesota since the 2024 election, said Luis Argueta, a spokesperson for Unidos MN, a local human rights organization .
“It’s a role that people choose to take on voluntarily, because they choose to look out for their neighbors,” Argueta said.
The protests have been largely peaceful, but the Twin Cities remained anxious. Minneapolis public schools on Monday will start offering remote learning for the next month in response to concerns that children might feel unsafe venturing out while tensions remain high.
Many schools closed last week after Good’s shooting and the upheaval that followed.
While the enforcement activity continues, two of the state’s leading Democrats said on Sunday that the investigation into Good’s shooting death shouldn’t be overseen solely by the federal government.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith said in separate interviews Sunday that state authorities should be included in the investigation because the federal government has already made clear what it believes happened.
“How can we trust the federal government to do an objective, unbiased investigation, without prejudice, when at the beginning of that investigation they have already announced exactly what they saw — what they think happened,” Smith said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The Trump administration has defended the officer who shot Good in her car, saying he was protecting himself and fellow agents and that Good had “weaponized” her vehicle.
Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, defended the officer on Fox News Channel’s “The Sunday Briefing.”
“That law enforcement officer had milliseconds, if not short time to make a decision to save his life and his other fellow agents,” he said.
Lyons also said the administration’s enforcement operations in Minnesota wouldn’t be needed “if local jurisdictions worked with us to turn over these criminally illegal aliens once they are already considered a public safety threat by the locals.”
The killing of Good by an ICE officer and the shooting of two people by federal agents in Portland, Oregon, led to dozens of protests across the country over the weekend.
Thousands of people marched Saturday in Minneapolis, where Homeland Security called its deployment of immigration officers in the Twin Cities its biggest ever immigration enforcement operation.
___
Associated Press journalists Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis, Thomas Strong in Washington, Bill Barrow in Atlanta, and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.
World
Netanyahu and Rubio discuss US military intervention in Iran amid ongoing nationwide protests: report
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the possibility of U.S. intervention in Iran, according to a report.
The two leaders spoke by phone Saturday as Israel is on “high alert,” preparing for the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Iran, according to Reuters, citing multiple Israeli sources. A U.S. official confirmed the call to Fox News Digital but did not provide additional details.
The report comes as nationwide anti-regime demonstrations across Iran hit the two-week mark.
On Saturday, the Iranian regime triggered an internet “kill switch” in an apparent effort to conceal alleged abuses by security forces and as protests against it surged nationwide, according to a cybersecurity expert. The blackout reduced internet access to a fraction of normal levels.
KEANE WARNS IRANIAN REGIME TO TAKE TRUMP ‘DEAD SERIOUS’ ON PROTEST KILLING THREAT AMID ONGOING DEMONSTRATIONS
Secretary of State Marco Rubio holds his end-of-year press conference at the State Department in Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2025. (Kevin Mohatt/Reuters)
On Sunday, Iran’s parliament speaker warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America strikes the Islamic Republic.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf issued the threat as lawmakers rushed the dais in the Iranian parliament, shouting, “Death to America!” according to The Associated Press.
President Donald Trump offered support for the protesters on Saturday, writing on Truth Social that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!”
IRANIAN MILITARY LEADER THREATENS PREEMPTIVE ATTACK AFTER TRUMP COMMENTS
In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran’s Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)
At a news conference Friday, Trump said Iran was facing mounting pressure as unrest spreads across the country.
“Iran’s in big trouble,” he said. “It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago. We’re watching the situation very carefully.”
The president said the U.S. would respond forcefully if the regime resorts to mass violence.
“We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts. And that doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts,” he said.
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Protests in Iran intensify for the 12th day. (The National Council of Resistance of Iran)
Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department and White House for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Emma Bussey, Brie Stimson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
World
Four killed, 20 injured in overnight Russian strikes across Ukraine
Published on
Russia fired more than 150 drones overnight into Sunday targeting close to two dozen locations across Ukraine, killing at least four people and injuring 20 more.
Ukraine’s Air Forces say they intercepted 125 drones aerially but confirmed that at least 25 strike drones struck their targets.
They added that Moscow’s latest barrage mainly targeted Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk, all of which were targeted in Saturday’s overnight strikes as well.
Local officials in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia say the strikes targeted residential areas and energy infrastructure. More than 385,000 homes were affected by electric, gas or water outages, at a critical time as temperatures plunged to 10 degrees below Celsius.
Regional lawmakers say service was restored to most of the affected households and areas by Sunday morning, but added that emergency work was still being carried out to restore power to the remaining homes.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of timing their attacks with the cold peaks of winter as to maximise civilian suffering.
“They struck targets that have no military purpose whatsoever – energy infrastructure, residential buildings. They deliberately waited for freezing weather to make things worse for our people. This is deliberate, cynical Russian terror specifically against civilians,” wrote Zelenskyy in a post on X.
He also noted that this week had seen heightened Russian assault on Ukrainian cities, announcing that his country’s defence forces recorded thousands of attacks using a variety of different weapons.
“Over the course of this week, Russia launched almost 1,100 attack drones against Ukraine, more than 890 guided aerial bombs, and over 50 missiles of various types – ballistic, cruise, and even the Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile.”
The Ukrainian leader thanked all units responsible for protecting the country and responding to attacks, and praised their tireless efforts and resilience.
He also called on allies to ensure his embattled country maintains “stable support”, in defence and diplomatic fields as coordinated dialogue efforts continue in search of peace.
Meanwhile, Russia says that one person was killed in Ukrainian strikes on the western city of Voronezh. Officials say a young woman succumbed to her wounds at an intensive care unit of a local hospital after debris from a drone fell on her house during Saturday’s attacks.
They added that at least three others were injured in the attacks which targeted more than 10 residential apartment buildings, private homes and a high school.
The city of Voronezh lies just 250 kilometres from the Ukrainian border and is home to approximately one million people. The attacks, which Kyiv have yet to confirm, came after the Kremlin’s major offensive on Ukraine in the early hours of Saturday.
Additional sources • AP
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