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The responsibility for the crisis in Ukraine lies entirely with the United States, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel told a Lebanese reporter.
"The US government has distorted the root cause of the conflict and has incited a sense of contempt for Russia through its enormous media power. I believe that they were the ones who fomented Russophobia and concealed the true causes of the conflict by making Russia out to be the scapegoat. I do think that the US government itself is to blame for the creation of this conflict," the Cuban leader said in an interview published on the YouTube channel of Cuba’s Mesa Redonda television program on Thursday.
"They put Russia in a situation that was incompatible with the country’s protection," Diaz-Canel insisted. According to him, Washington has been deliberately provoking wars "to sell weapons and, in that way, resolve its own domestic problems." Everyone but the United States is victimized by the conflict, he emphasized.
The Cuban president called on the international community to support initiatives that would contribute to establishing a dialogue between the parties to the conflict. It is also necessary to give the parties a guarantee that any peace would be a lasting one, he said.
US seeking to drag everyone into Ukrainian conflict, but Hungary not buying — Orban
The United States has not given up on its aim of embroiling everyone it can into the military conflict in Ukraine, but Hungary will remain on the side of peace, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told the Kossuth radio station on Friday.
The head of government stressed that the US "has not abandoned its plan to shoehorn everyone into a military alliance," supplying weapons to Ukraine and supporting continued hostilities. In connection with this, he reiterated that the threat of the Ukrainian conflict morphing into a new world war has been growing with each passing day.
©AP Photo/Petr David Josek
"And if a world war breaks out, it will be a nuclear war," Orban noted. In his opinion, the current escalation of the conflict in Ukraine attests to the fact that the [combatant] countries are literally "inches away from the use of nuclear weapons."
This is precisely why Hungary supports the swiftest possible ceasefire and the commencement of peace talks on settling the Ukrainian conflict, the Hungarian prime minister emphasized.
Serbia Has Not And Will Not Export Weapons To Ukraine, Says Vucic
Serbia has not and will not export weapons or ammunition to Ukraine and there isn’t a single document that could prove otherwise, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic told the media following his meeting with Kosovo Serbs on Thursday.
We sell ammunition, but not to Ukraine and Russia – we are very careful about that, said the President, adding that, if you sell something to Turkey, that can end up on both sides of the battlefield.
The agency Reuters reported Wednesday that Serbia, the only country that has refused to impose sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, agreed to supply weapons to Kyiv or had already shipped some to Ukraine, information allegedly contained in a classified Pentagon document.
We will continue to invest in our production and factories and to export to all the permitted destinations and end-users, said Vucic. “Even if Serbia agreed so export to these end-users only on condition that they not send anything to battlefields, what do they care once they become the owners – they ship it to wherever they want. And there is nothing we can do about it.”
The President said Serbian factories will continue to export across the world, in line with international rules. “Our goal is to make money,” said Vucic.
Brazil's president wants to end dollar dominance and backs calls for BRICS nations to use their own currency
Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has urged developing nations to find an alternative currency to the dollar, denouncing the central role of the greenback in global trade.
Thursday's comments, from a speech made during this week's state trip to China, lend another voice to growing de-dollarization rhetoric from leaders of BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
"Why can't we do trade based on our own currencies?" he said, per The Financial Times. "Who was it that decided that the dollar was the currency after the disappearance of the gold standard?"
Speaking at the New Development Bank of Shanghai, Lula called for BRICS nations to establish a common currency to with which they could transact.
"Why can't a bank like that of the BRICS have a currency to finance trade relations between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other countries? It's difficult because we are unaccustomed [to the idea]. Everyone depends on just one currency."
Last year, BRICS countries were reviewing a new currency based on a basket of member currencies. The idea sprung out of incentives to move away from dollar dependence, which proved detrimental after Russia was cut off of its dollar reserves, due to its invasion of Ukraine.
And in January, in another bid to move away from the dollar's dominance, Lula announced that Brazil and Argentina were looking into the development of a common currency.
His stance also represents warming ties between China and Brazil, as Lula attempts a multilateralist approach to foreign affairs. For instance, while maintaining good relations with the US, Brazil has recently agreed to using the yuan in cross-border transactions with China.
Though it's been floated that such changes imply an important shift in the currency regime, a number of analysts have found the so-called de-dollarization of global trade highly improbable. While the dollar may weaken as the world's go-to currency, there are no likely alternatives that would be able to completely replace it.
Even the Chinese yuan, whose role in trade finance has more than doubled since the Ukraine war, is a poor contender. Not only is it virtually pegged to the dollar, China's tight control of it keeps it from adhering to free market flows.
The prospect of Brazilians casting the dollar off in the near future is also unlikely, FT reported, as the currency holds a crucial role in commodity markets and industries that Brazil is heavily involved in.
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