Daoud Kuttab
“Throughout this Israeli war on Gaza, there hasn't been a warning publicly made by the US that Israel has heeded. It is indeed unclear to what extent such warnings are just optics of putting pressure on the Israeli government while continuing to support its every move. In this sense, one should take with a grain of salt reports that the Biden administration is holding off one shipment of weapons to Israel to pressure it into halting the full-scale invasion of Rafah.”
3 hours ago
Bernie Sanders
“The US must now use ALL its leverage to demand an immediate ceasefire, the end of the attacks on Rafah, and the immediate delivery of massive amounts of humanitarian aid to people living in desperation. Our leverage is clear. Over the years, the United States has provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel.”
4 hours ago
Lloyd Austin
“We've been very clear … from the very beginning that Israel shouldn't launch a major attack into Rafah without accounting for and protecting the civilians that are in that battlespace. We've not made a final determination on how to proceed with that shipment [of weapons].”
4 hours ago
Vuk Vuksanović
“This visit [Xi Jinping in Belgrade] shows that Serbia has exchanged Russia for China went it comes to its main partner to bargain with the West. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine placed the Serbo-Russian relationship under close monitoring, so the government sees a benefit in playing the Chinese card more often now since it's deemed to be less provocative. The Balkans, and Serbia in particular, have become even more interesting for China now that one branch of the Belt and Road Initiative through Russia and Belarus was effectively cut off with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”
4 hours ago
Aleksandar Vucic
“I told him [Xi Jinping] that as the leader of a great power he will be met with respect all over the world, but the reverence and love he encounters in our Serbia will not be found anywhere else. When it comes to cooperation with Beijing, the sky is the limit.”
4 hours ago
Catherine Russell
“Rafah is now a city of children, who have nowhere safe to go in Gaza. If large-scale military operations start, not only will children be at risk from the violence, but also from chaos and panic, and at a time where their physical and mental states are already weakened.”
8 hours ago
Hani Mahmoud
“You cannot create a safe zone in a war zone. Every time people move from one place to another, they are in search of basic needs and … necessities that are becoming very hard to find right now.”
8 hours ago
Daoud Kuttab
“Throughout this Israeli war on Gaza, there hasn't been a warning publicly made by the US that Israel has heeded. It is indeed unclear to what extent such warnings are just optics of putting pressure on the Israeli government while continuing to support its every move. In this sense, one should take with a grain of salt reports that the Biden administration is holding off one shipment of weapons to Israel to pressure it into halting the full-scale invasion of Rafah.”
3 hours ago
Bernie Sanders
“The US must now use ALL its leverage to demand an immediate ceasefire, the end of the attacks on Rafah, and the immediate delivery of massive amounts of humanitarian aid to people living in desperation. Our leverage is clear. Over the years, the United States has provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel.”
4 hours ago
Lloyd Austin
“We've been very clear … from the very beginning that Israel shouldn't launch a major attack into Rafah without accounting for and protecting the civilians that are in that battlespace. We've not made a final determination on how to proceed with that shipment [of weapons].”
4 hours ago
Vuk Vuksanović
“This visit [Xi Jinping in Belgrade] shows that Serbia has exchanged Russia for China went it comes to its main partner to bargain with the West. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine placed the Serbo-Russian relationship under close monitoring, so the government sees a benefit in playing the Chinese card more often now since it's deemed to be less provocative. The Balkans, and Serbia in particular, have become even more interesting for China now that one branch of the Belt and Road Initiative through Russia and Belarus was effectively cut off with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”
4 hours ago
Aleksandar Vucic
“I told him [Xi Jinping] that as the leader of a great power he will be met with respect all over the world, but the reverence and love he encounters in our Serbia will not be found anywhere else. When it comes to cooperation with Beijing, the sky is the limit.”
4 hours ago
Catherine Russell
“Rafah is now a city of children, who have nowhere safe to go in Gaza. If large-scale military operations start, not only will children be at risk from the violence, but also from chaos and panic, and at a time where their physical and mental states are already weakened.”
8 hours ago
Hani Mahmoud
“You cannot create a safe zone in a war zone. Every time people move from one place to another, they are in search of basic needs and … necessities that are becoming very hard to find right now.”
8 hours ago
“If there was any illusion that we could one day rely on our Western partners, this illusion is no longer there. What the Americans want is a unipolar world which would not be like a global village but like an American village - or maybe like a saloon where you know the strongest calls the shots. We will now have to rely only on ourselves and on our allies who stay with us. We are not closing the door on the West - they are doing so.”
“Neutral status is now being seriously discussed along, of course, with security guarantees. Now this very thing is being discussed in negotiations - there are absolutely specific formulations which in my view are close to agreement.”
“We will not persuade anyone to buy our oil and gas. If they want to replace it with something, they are welcome, we will have supply markets, we already have them.”
“We will come out of this crisis with refreshed views of the world - with no illusions about the West. We will try to never again be dependent on the West.”
“Kosovo and some other parts of the Western Balkans are becoming a hotbed of crime. There are terrorists, drug dealers. Mercenaries are recruited there for military conflicts ignited by the US, among others. There is information that militants from Kosovo, Albania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina are being recruited to knock Russia off balance, which includes sending them to Donbass [in eastern Ukraine].”
“We are very concerned by the reports of recent days - yesterday and the day before there was a sharp increase in shelling using weapons that are prohibited under the Minsk agreements. So far we are seeing the special monitoring mission is doing its best to smooth over all questions that point to the blame of Ukraine's armed forces.”
“I'm honestly disappointed that what we have is a conversation between a dumb and a deaf person...Our most detailed explanations fell on unprepared soil. They say Russia is waiting until the ground freezes like a stone so its tanks can easily cross into Ukrainian territory. I think the ground was like that today with our British colleagues, from which numerous facts that we produced bounced off.”
“We want good, equal, mutually respectful relations with the United States, like with every country in the world. Learning from bitter experience, we do not want to remain in a position where our security is infringed daily.”
“There was no positive response to the main question [NATO expansion] but there is a response, which gives hope for the start of a serious conversation on secondary questions.”
“[The West] is trying, as they say, to punish those who pursue an independent policy, primarily our country and the People's Republic of China, using all variety of unsuitable tools such as various sanctions, demonization in the media space, provocations by special services and much more.”
“If we don't receive a constructive answer, and the West continues its aggressive course, then Moscow, as our president said earlier many times, will undertake appropriate responsive measures.”
“We have serious doubts that the key thing in the proposals - the unconditional demand for a halt to NATO's eastward expansion - won't fall by the wayside.”
“We will be holding a major round of [security] talks with the United States that will take place immediately after the end of the New Year holidays. NATO is now a purely geopolitical project to develop territory that has become ownerless after the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is what they are doing.”
“Negotiations would start at the very beginning of next year. The first round will be held in the form of a bilateral contact between our and US negotiators, who have already been named and are acceptable for both sides. We do not want war. We do not need conflicts and, hopefully, everyone else does not view conflicts as a desirable course of action.”
“We're going to make sure we are heard but the main thing is our security. So if NATO still refuses to discuss this theme or the guarantees or ideas put forward by the president of Russia Vladimir Putin, of course we will take measures to ensure that our security, our sovereignty and our territorial integrity does not depend on anyone else.”