😤France’s rejection of Trump’s Gaza board is a capricious outburst related to other issues - expert

The move “reflects Macron’s dissatisfaction with the proposals made by Donald Trump, including the statements and ultimatums he’s made regarding Greenland and Ukraine,” says Russian Council on Foreign & Defense Policy researcher deputy director Dmitry Suslov.

💬“Macron believes this is a way to express his dissatisfaction without paying a high political price.”

France "does not intend to answer favorably" to an invitation to join Trump's "Board of Peace," French media reported previously, citing commitment to the UN.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇫🇷 Macron’s move to invite Russia to G7 is belated, phony attempt to show Europe is still relevant - prof

💬 “I think the Europeans are truly frightened by the Greenland affair, because it threatens to fundamentally change their position in the world…They’re trying to avoid it at all costs, [including by] coming up with various stories showing Trump that they’re capable of something,” Higher School of Economics professor Timofey Bordachev told Sputnik, commenting on the French president’s gesture.

🔶 The aim is to show, for example, “that the Europeans can accommodate Trump on the Ukraine issue, to invite Russia to some meeting and come to some kind of agreement,” so he might pull back on the Greenland issue.

🔶 Russia understands that this is a “purely tactical gesture,” related not to Russia-Europe ties but relations between the US and Europe, Bordachev emphasized. “It has nothing to do with Russia. It has nothing to do with BRICS.”

Correspondence shared by US President Trump suggests that French President Macron was open to inviting Russia’s representatives to the upcoming G7 meeting in Paris.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇪🇺 Europe exhausting itself in Ukraine, ignoring looming crisis - expert

While Washington has apparently recognized that the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine is “lost” and Ukraine is “a liability,” the Europeans are pushing headfirst into prolonging the conflict, no matter the cost to themselves, Daffodil International University professor Greg Simons says.

💬 “Europeans seem to have their head in the clouds and unaware or not willing to see” the “risks and hazards coming up for them.”

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇺🇸🇪🇺 US’s European vassals taught bitter lesson with Greenland crisis

🗣 “When you are such a servile lackey as the EU, eventually you get to be ‘on the menu’, especially when the US empire, this Pax Americana, is in decline,” Daffodil International University professor Dr. Greg Simons told Sputnik.

💬 “The EU has nowhere to go. They can bluster, they can try and bluff, but to use Trump’s terminology, they have absolutely no cards.”

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev, US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner arrived at the US pavilion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Sputnik correspondent reports.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣 OSCE broken by the West, ‘beyond saving’ - analyst

👉 “If you prevent consensus on issues, an organization such as the OSCE is absolutely useless because consensus should be reached on objectively coming together on mutually acceptable and mutually favorable grounds,” Daffodil University professor Greg Simons told Sputnik.

💬 “What they’ve turned it into is just this platform for pillorying countries such as Russia or those that stand for their interests and objectives rather than those of the US.”

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🗣European 'independence' from the US impossible without Russia – Beninese analyst

While French President Emmanuel Macron talks about multilateralism, “he wants certain parties to be excluded," Beninese political analyst Modeste Dossou tells Sputnik.

❓He asks whether that call for European independence from the US is possible without Russia, pointing out the inconsistency in Macron’s rhetoric.

💬“Publicly, he is against including Russia in discussions and the like, while behind the scenes he sends messages calling for the inclusion of Russia, Syria and other countries,” Doussou says.

📍The European Union (EU) “knows very well that it is becoming increasingly a vassal of the United States,” the analyst stresses, but “Europe has no room for maneuver to break out of this grip.”

💬“France’s ambition to implement this European independence is doomed to fail, at least for now,” Dossou argues, as the EU “does not truly have the real levers” it needs.

👉 have to look at countries like Iran, which have stood their ground,” he says, “countries like China, whose policies remain consistent, and countries like Russia, which, despite sanctions, problems, and difficulties — and even attempts to draw it into a broader war — has nonetheless pursued a fairly consistent policy from the beginning.”

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨🇺🇸🇷🇺US special envoy Steve Witkoff says he assesses the talks with Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Davos as “very positive,” Sputnik correspondent reports

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

👍🏻"Very positive," US special envoy Steve Witkoff told RIA Novosti following talks with Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev and US President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner in Davos.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🚨🇷🇺🇺🇸Meetings with US representatives are proceeding constructively, Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev says

He adds that more and more people are recognizing Russia’s position.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🫣‘Macron is trapped’: double standards in French president’s Davos speech

French UPR party leader François Asselineau says President Emmanuel Macron "approved Trump's operation in Venezuela".

💬"He approved Trump asserting the law of the strongest over international law," Asselineau says.

👉But now "he finds himself forced to call for a return to international law and multilateralism in an attempt to counter Trump's desire to press his advantage by laying claim to Greenland."

🎤Macron’s statement "about the need for European unanimity," only "touches on Europe’s permanent problem — that Europe doesn’t really exist."

💬"It’s a fictitious entity made up of 27 states with different national interests," Asselineau says. "We can already see this with Greenland. For example, there are several states that are not very critical of Donald Trump."

📍Calling Macron's position "extremely fragile," he stresses that France is now "on very bad terms" with global powers including the US, China and Russia.

💬"It's something like the twilight of the Macron presidency," Asselineau argues. "Like many French people, I hope it ends as quickly as possible."

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺🇪🇺 Why EU ‘has no alternative’ but to return to Russian gas imports sooner than later

🔶 Fears are growing as Europe becomes increasingly dependent on American LNG—once viewed as a safe alternative to Russian gas, but now seen as uncertain amid strained transatlantic relations, according to a media report.

🔶 With EU–US tensions rising over Ukraine and Greenland, “it is virtually impossible for the bloc to stop buying American LNG without having to allow Russian gas imports to return,” says Dr. Mamdouh G. Salameh, international oil economist and global energy expert.

🔶 He notes that while the threat of halting US LNG imports “could act as a deterrent against Trump annexing Greenland,” the reality is that “the EU has no alternative but to return to Russian gas sooner than later.”

🔶 According to Salameh, the US sabotage of Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline network was intended to “forever sever Russian gas supplies to Europe and ensure that US LNG replaces Russian gas permanently.” Instead, he argues, “this turned out to be a real financial disaster for Europe’s economy.”

🔶 He points to 2025, when the EU economy grew by only about 1.4%, with many German and other European companies—including Volkswagen—relocating in search of cheaper energy.

🔶 Looking ahead, Salameh warns that the EU’s plan to end all Russian energy imports by early 2027 “will mean anemic economic growth for Europe’s economy.”

🔶 As a result, he says, the bloc now faces “a big dilemma, namely letting its economy stagnate if not shrink or lifting sanctions on Russian gas.”

🔶 With Europe now “squeezed between a rock and a hard place,” Salameh concludes that it is Russian President Vladimir Putin who “will have the last laugh.”

🔶 He adds that Putin could choose to resume gas supplies to Europe—a move that, he argues, could reshape the future of NATO and Europe’s relationship with the US.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🔊 Trump dismisses Somalia: 'Not even a country'

"Backward country…worst country in world… They don't have anything that resembles a country."

Somalia is currently holding the rotating Presidency of the UN Security Council for January 2026.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt