Though little has remained of the Islamic State, which once ruled a third of both Syria and Iraq, two major offensives that left scores dead put forces in both countries on high alert Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) troops aided by U.S. troops tightened their siege of a prison housing …

Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday rejected a British claim that the Kremlin is seeking to replace Ukraine’s government with a pro-Moscow administration, and that former Ukrainian lawmaker Yevheniy Murayev is a potential candidate. Britain’s Foreign Office on Saturday also named several other Ukrainian politicians it said had links with Russian …

The U.S. Navy announced Sunday it seized a boat in the Gulf of Oman carrying fertilizer used to make explosives that was caught last year smuggling weapons to Yemen. The British royal navy said it confiscated 2,295 pounds of illegal drugs in the same waters. The interdictions were just the …

In his raspy smoker’s voice, the middle-age Ukrainian soldier urged a visitor to hurry through a stretch of muddy trench that traversed an open clearing. Gesturing eastward, he warned of snipers lurking only a few hundred yards away. “We must run until we reach cover,” he said. On the front …

Three hundred and forty kilometers east of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, lies the city of Poltava. At its heart is a semi-circular square with a cast-iron column and nearly two dozen eighteenth-century Swedish cannons captured in the 1709 Battle of Poltava, a decisive encounter in the Great Northern War, waged …

As Moscow signals its apparent readiness for war over Ukraine, the U.S. government seems determined to ignore Russia’s not-so-ridiculous concerns over the military alliances of neighboring states and the prospect of nuclear weapons on its borders. Should Americans worry about our country inserting itself into another war? Ukraine is far …

When Aidana Zhanadilova and her friends arrived at Republic Square on January 6, Almaty was enveloped in a meteorological and communications fog. The day before, after a crowd of several thousand people overpowered security forces and broke into Almaty’s city hall, the government flicked the switch on the internet. What …

Among the 9 jurisdictions singled out by the European Union for their “abusive tax practices”, no less than 6 are small, Pacific island nations with underdeveloped economies. As unlikely as it seems, Brussels’ obsession with the region looks like it has less to do with the noble fight against tax …

The Biden administration is threatening to use a novel export control to damage strategic Russian industries, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian aerospace, if Moscow invades Ukraine, administration officials say. The administration may also decide to apply the control more broadly in a way that would potentially deprive …

The European Union needs clearer rules on balancing respect for human rights with the need for border protection, the chief of the EU’s Frontex border and coastguard agency said on Friday. Frontex is under growing scrutiny over allegations it violated the human rights of certain people seeking asylum while forcefully …