Overview
- The Kremlin released a broad list of Christmas and New Year 2026 telegrams to heads of state across BRICS, Latin America, Central Asia, North Korea, Turkey, the United States, and the Vatican.
- Named recipients included US President Donald Trump, China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Slovakia’s Robert Fico, Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić, Pope Leo XIV, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
- Outreach to the Global South featured Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Vietnam’s party chief To Lam and President Lương Cường, Indonesia’s Prabowo Subianto, Cuba’s Miguel Díaz-Canel, Laos’s Thongloun Sisoulith, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, Ethiopia’s leadership, and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa.
- Central Asian leaders received greetings, including Kazakhstan’s Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Kyrgyzstan’s Sadyr Japarov, Tajikistan’s Emomali Rahmon, Turkmenistan’s Serdar and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, and Uzbekistan’s Shavkat Mirziyoyev, with messages also sent to Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko plus Armenia’s leadership and Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev.
- Putin spoke by phone with Uzbekistan’s Shavkat Mirziyoyev, with both leaders voicing satisfaction with progress in their strategic partnership, and Dmitry Peskov said Putin will deliver his traditional New Year message at midnight.