Against the backdrop of the third year of the Ukrainian nightmare, it is somehow strange to remember the anniversary of the start of another war - the Soviet one in Afghanistan. A war, of course, different in many ways from the current one, but similar at the level of symbolic details. Then it was “fulfillment of an international duty”; now it has become a “special military operation”. Apparently, the Kremlin finds it even easier to start wars than to call them by their name.

Vladimir, a homeless man from Krasnodar, was beaten after asking for a cigarette. Oleg, who lived in a cemetery in Sochi on a piece of insulation, lay there for days after the attack by teenagers. Roman from Armavir worked all winter for free on someone else’s farm - but he’s not offended by the owner, because he promised payment every two years, but Roman couldn’t stand it and left early.

Almost three years after the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine, many have hope that it will end soon. And it is connected with the return of Donald Trump to the White House. What are the chances that his rise to power in the United States will actually influence the course of the war and push the parties to negotiate? How can the US President put pressure on Vladimir Putin and force him to peace? What impact will the economic situation have on political processes in Russia?

An unusual device, called “artificial language” by analogy with artificial intelligence, was recently presented at Nanjing University in China. The task of a small portable device is to determine the composition of alcoholic beverages and draw conclusions about their quality, originality and safety. Nanopores help with this - the same ones that at the end of the 2000s revolutionized the determination of the nucleotide sequence of DNA.

Moscow Victor Berezkin/Keystone Press Agency The end of the year is a time for summing up and trying to predict the coming year. So we traditionally asked economists about this, who have been telling us about what is happening all this year. Economists Andrei Movchan, Sergei Aleksashenko, Oleg Buklemishev and Sergei Petrov answer Republic’s questions. The most important economic result of this year for Russia?

Donald Trump has again said that he wants to buy Greenland, an island in the northeast of North America, an autonomous territory of Denmark. Representatives of Greenland and Denmark responded to Trump’s statement and even decided to increase spending on the island’s defense. Why does Trump want to take control of Greenland? The Washington Post reports. Since the start of his first term as president, Donald Trump has insisted that the United States must buy Greenland.

Peace negotiations in the saloon carriage of Field Marshal Foch in Compiegne, November 1918. On the left are the Germans, on the right are the Allies. The head of the German delegation, Matthias Erzberger, stands with his back to the viewer, and Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch stands opposite him.

Damaged Russian equipment in Ukraine Photo: AR Columnist Nikolai Mitrokhin, who every week prepared military reports for Republic readers with an analysis of what was happening on the fronts in Ukraine, prepared a general overview of military events for 2024, and also voiced his own forecasts for 2025.

At the site of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash near Aktau Photo: AR Western publications claim that the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane that crashed in Kazakhstan, flying from Baku to Grozny, was shot down by a Russian missile while repelling an attack by Ukrainian drones. This is evidenced by the damage that was found on the skin of the liner, which was first noticed by war bloggers.

During the year, Republic wrote more than once about new laws adopted by the State Duma of the Russian Federation. About their repressive nature. How these legislative acts violate human rights is contrary to the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the very spirit of the law. Now, on the eve of the New Year, we want to look at the work of the State Duma over the past year as a whole, in totality, in order to understand how the legislative branch influences the life of the country.