When he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently believed Russian forces would topple the government within weeks and restore Moscow’s dominance over the country after 30 years of independence. Putin was mistaken, and the war he started rages on nearly three years later. It’s hard to imagine Putin…
Syrian rebels led by Islamist militants have entered the central city of Homs as they close in on Damascus while the country’s main allies — Russia and Iran — scrambled to protect the regime of authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad and their own assets in the country. Abu Mohammad al-Golani, a leader of the Hayat Tahrir…
U.S. President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden days before his scheduled sentencing on gun-possession and tax-related charges, despite having repeatedly said he would not do so. The sweeping pardon announced on December 1 exonerates Hunter Biden, 54, from any crime he may have committed between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024. That…
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called on Israel and the Iran-backed groups it is fighting in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon to call a truce after the Israeli military said it had killed a top official for Hezbollah, a militant group and political party that controls much of southern Lebanon, who had been…
Residents of two Ukrainian cities — Mykolayiv and Odesa — shared their thoughts about President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s plan intended to make Russia stop its war against Ukraine. The president presented it to parliament on October 16. While some welcomed “any plan” that could end the war, others were less impressed with proposed steps that are…
WASHINGTON — The United States must prepare for a “long-term” confrontation with Russia that won’t end when authoritarian President Vladimir Putin departs from the political scene, according to a new report by a bipartisan commission. Ukraine’s defeat of Russia on the battlefield is critical to winning that confrontation, and Washington should do all it can…
Five days before President Vladimir Putin announced that he would loosen the conditions under which Russia might use a nuclear weapon against an adversary, one of those very same nuclear weapons had a spectacularly explosive mishap. The Sarmat, Russia’s newest intercontinental ballistic missile, a next-generation projectile that Putin has bragged about, erupted in an unexplained…