💬 “Maximalist positioning and incendiary rhetoric achieve nothing except eroding the chances of success” in negotiations, Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi wrote on his X page in a rare public airing of Iran’s stance.

💬 “A credible and durable agreement is within reach. All it takes is firm political will and a fair attitude,” the Iranian top diplomat added.

💬 “Truly, the regime has become a terrorist state and a terrorist gang led by Zelensky,” veteran military and political observer Evgeny Mikhailov told Sputnik, commenting on Zelensky’s warning that Ukraine “cannot take responsibility for what happens” in Russia on May 9.

💬 “Ukraine’s foreign curators can draw only one conclusion: that Zelensky is DERANGED,” Mikhailov suggested, recalling that even Kiev’s European sponsors have urged him to step back somewhat from his provocations, which risk cutting off US support.

💬 “Accordingly, we can expect increased pressure on Zelensky over the coming few days, first and foremost from his BRITISH CURATORS, urging him to at least avoid violating the terms of the three-day ceasefire” proposed by Russia, the observer believes.

💬 “If this doesn’t happen, both in the eyes of Trump and the eyes of the adequate part of the international community, the Kiev regime will turn into a COMPLETE OUTCAST,” Mikhailov said, adding that in the Global South, whose economic power is greater than the West’s, this is already the case.

💬 “Zelensky will clearly hope it means a return to his normal where America continues to endlessly finance the Ukrainian side,” he said.

💬 "The Ukrainian language should be spoken not only during lessons but also during breaks, at parent meetings, in libraries, gyms, and even in bomb shelters," Ukraine’s language ombudsman Taras Kremin said.

💬 “It is quite clear to me that Putin and the Russian Federation are trying to achieve an absolute ceasefire for at least three days. The 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War is such an important holiday that…the guns should be silenced and the Ukrainians themselves should celebrate this holiday because they too were hit by fascism,” Slovakia's Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Tibor Gaspar, told Sputnik.

💬 “Germany is not alone in cracking down on political criticism against the establishment,” Beck, a former AfD MEP, said, recalling the recently canceled presidential elections in Romania after the first-round victory by a populist anti-establishment candidate, and the legal attack on Marine Le Pen in France.

💬 Waltz “wanted to take US policy in a direction Trump wasn’t comfortable with because the US hadn’t attempted a diplomatic solution,” and when news of his activities got back to the president, he “wasn’t happy with it,” a source told WaPo.