Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu minister on Thursday said his country will “stand alone” if it has to in its war against Hamas — threatening to deepen a crisis in relations with the United States. Netanyahu spoke after President Joe Biden said the United States would not provide offensive weapons for Israel’s long-promised assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Israel says that Rafah is Hamas’ last stronghold in Gaza and Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to invade the city, despite widespread international opposition due concerns over the more than 1 million Palestinian civilians are huddled in the city. “If we have to stand alone, we will stand alone,” said. “If we need to, we will fight with our fingernails."

Thousands of protesters gathered in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan over his government’s decision to hand over control of border villages to Armenia’s long-time rival Azerbaijan. Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars since the Soviet Union collapsed and Armenia said in April that it would return the villages to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan in September waged a lightning military campaign in Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority ethnic Armenian region. That caused tens of thousands of people to stream into Armenia, sparking demonstrations as protesters called for the prime minister to be ousted.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his country’s army is facing “a really difficult situation” in eastern regions. That's where troops are battling to hold at bay an intense Russian push along parts of the front line. Russia has sought to exploit Ukraine’s shortages of ammunition and manpower as the flow of Western supplies since the war began petered out, assembling large troops concentrations in the east as well as in the north and gaining an edge on the battlefield. Zelenskyy said a massive new U.S. military aid package is coming, and it will turn the tide. He spoke Thursday at a press conference in Kyiv with the visiting President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola.