In the final working week before Christmas, EU leaders gathered for a meeting that might prove historic – but not for the reasons they hoped.

EU chiefs have slammed Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico following his Kremlin meeting with Vladimir Putin on Sunday. Fico secured a new deal for cheap Russian fossil fuels, essential to Slovakia as it's among the EU nations most dependent on Russian ...

US President-elect Donald Trump announced a possible meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, the EU is working on new sanctions against Russia. Read more about what happened over the weekend.

Brussels was enraged after Viktor Orban met with Putin in Moscow - now another EU leader has met the Russian President in the Kremlin.

And yet, when the town’s residents cast their ballots in last month’s presidential election, they overwhelmingly voted for Călin Georgescu, the candidate who showed every sign of being the preferred choice of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks in the Kremlin on Sunday with Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico (shown here in Brussels in February 2024), in a rare visit to Moscow by an EU leader since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. (Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks in the Kremlin on Sunday with Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, in a rare visit to Moscow by an EU leader since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine began in 2022.

Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the RUSI think tank and the author of the book Russia in Africa, described the collapse of Assad’s regime as a “geopolitical and status defeat for Russia” that not only creates logistical problems but undermines its reputation with pro-Kremlin dictators in Africa.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk walk ahead of other European leaders prior to a group photo at an EU summit ... whether from Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping or U.S ...

Vladimir Solovyov, a pro-Kremlin mouth-piece made a damning threat on Christmas Eve, saying "nothing will protect" the West from, Oreshnik, Putin's new hypersonic ballistic missile

Despite the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 being denounced widely by both the EU and NATO, Prime Minister Fico sensationally claimed this week that Putin had been "wrongly demonised" by the West.