Russia’s Central Bank and government have sufficient tools and resources to maintain stability amid macroeconomic uncertainty, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a recent meeting with investors. He stressed that the authorities were determined to create favorable conditions, which would ensure the safety of investments and minimize the risks.

The fact alone that the UN Security Council convened to discuss the US plan for Israeli-Palestinian settlement, the so-called ‘deal of the century’, in spite of Palestine and a few other Arab nations rejecting the imitative demonstrates that the Palestinian side’s positions are weakening as time goes on, research director at the Valdai Discussion Club Fyodor Lukyanov told TASS on Wednesday.

The current political situation in Lebanon is beginning to look like a mini-melting pot of major contradictions, the chief of the Middle and Near East Center at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, Vladimir Fitin, told TASS, when asked for a comment about Lebanese President Michel Aoun’s decision to approve a new government, which caused another wave of street protests in Beirut.

While lamenting Soleimani’s liquidation, Russian experts see the Kremlin as the big winner as tensions rise between the U.S. and Iran—both geopolitically and financially.

At a panel session titled ‘The Race for Relevance and Influence in the Region: GCC, Iran, Turkey & Russia’ during the 12th Arab Strategy Forum (ASF 2019) on Monday, panelists said that Middle Eastern countries need to join forces with international powers to bring peace to the region.

Georgia’s former president, Mikhail Saakahsvili, may try to use the current wave of protests in an attempt to bolster his party’s image and stage a political comeback, analyst Konstantin Tasits, of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, told TASS on Friday.

The situation with Bolivian President Evo Morales, who was ousted in a coup and granted political asylum in Mexico, is advantageous for the United States, analyst Igor Pshenichnikov, of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI), told TASS.