National Interest

by Andrew C. Kuchins and Chris Monday

    How does the Kremlin want the world to remember 2025  Russia Decoded analyzes Russia’s year-end media narrative on war, diplomacy and the West.

<a href="https://rss.com/podcasts/russian-news-decoded/2419610">December 28, 2025: The Kremlin&#8217;s Year in Review</a>

    As 2025 draws to a close, Russia’s flagship Sunday news program, Vesti Nedeli, offered its viewers a carefully curated verdict on the year’s upheavals. The year-end broadcast is the focus of the latest episode of Russia Decoded, a new podcast where veteran Russia watchers Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday parse how the Kremlin and Russian elites understand the world and how they seek to influence it.

    The central theme in Sunday’s broadcast was diplomacy, particularly the optics surrounding renewed US-Russia engagement. Russian television lingered on President Trump’s one-hour phone call with Vladimir Putin immediately before Trump met face to face with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. As the hosts observe, Moscow appears less interested in a swift settlement than in leverage: “[Putin] is using this negotiation process in a calculated way to squeeze Zelensky,” Chris Monday says, “basically forcing [him] to make these very unpopular concessions.”

    At the same time, the Kremlin elevates US-Russia talks. Referencing the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska in August, Vesti Nedeli now invokes the “Spirit of Anchorage,” a label meant to echo the summits of the Cold War when Russia still enjoyed superpower status.

    Europe fares far worse in the year-end narrative. Russian rhetoric toward European leaders has grown ever more contemptuous, including Putin’s use of the vulgar insult podsvinki (“piglets”) at a recent meeting with military leaders. The graphic imagery is deliberate: subservient Europeans are nursing on “this big mother pig, the United States,” says Kuchins. Despite Europe’s assertion of itself as a strategic actor through its new €90 billion loan package for Ukraine, Moscow decries the loan as “stealing money from European taxpayers.”

    At home, Vesti Nedeli works to refine Putin’s image. Gone are flamboyant displays. Instead, viewers see a “spartan” commander-in-chief in simple fatigues, projecting calm and resilience.

    When it comes to technology, however, this tone shifts. The Kremlin portrays Russia as a rising AI superpower. “Every day the war goes on and [Russia] is under sanctions,” Andy Kuchins cautions, “extends the period of time that it will take for them to catch up” to China and the US.

    Some of the most revealing moments, the hosts argue, are news developments on which Russian television stays silent. A New York Times report that a senior Putin aide opposed the 2022 invasion of Ukraine never appears on state news. Nor does coverage of a recent Russian missile strike that hit Azerbaijan’s embassy in Kyiv.

What do these silences reveal about unease inside the Kremlin  And as Moscow declares vindication at year’s end, is confidence masking deeper uncertainty about the road ahead.