September 1st, 20180MOSCOW — Russia will begin a major naval exercise in the Mediterranean on Saturday, the Ministry of Defense announced, a move the Kremlin said was justified by a failure to deal with militants in Syria’s Idlib province.
Idlib and areas surrounding it are the last major enclave held by rebels opposed to Syrian President Bashar...
August 26th, 20180MOSCOW - A senior Russian official warned the U.S. on Saturday against making any “reckless” moves in Syria, the RIA news agency reported.
Reacting to comments by National Security Adviser John Bolton about Washington’s possible strong reaction in the event of a chemical or biological attack in the Syrian region of Idlib, Deputy...
August 4th, 20180MOSCOW — Russia will deploy its military police on the Golan Heights frontier between Syria and Israel, its defense ministry said on Thursday, after weeks of mounting volatility in the area.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s sweeping away of rebels in southwestern Syria has worried Israel, which believes it could allow his...
July 22nd, 20180BEIRUT/AMMAN — President Bashar al-Assad is set to recover control of the Syrian frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in a major victory over rebels who have agreed to surrender terms, sources on both sides said on Thursday.
Backed by Russian air power and unopposed by Assad’s foreign adversaries, government forces...
July 22nd, 20180For nearly 80 years the U.S. and Russia (or the former Soviet Union) have held summits. In each case, it has been a forum for domestic political debate. The president’s supporters always say the summit took solid steps towards peace and understanding, even while the president remained forceful and unyielding. Meanwhile, the...
July 20th, 20180WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Senate has overwhelmingly approved a resolution against allowing Russia to question former U.S. ambassador Michael McFaul or other U.S. officials. It was a formal rebuke to President Trump, who touted the offer at the Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump faced outrage on Tuesday for his...
July 15th, 20180MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday handed over the mantle of World Cup host to the emir of Qatar, whose country will stage the 2022 edition of the tournament.
The ceremony marked a handover from the world’s largest country by landmass to one of the smallest. Qatar has a population of 2.3 million people and an area...
July 14th, 20180AMMAN/BEIRUT — The Syrian government raised the national flag on Thursday over areas of Deraa city that have been in rebel hands for years, a major victory for President Bashar al-Assad in the birthplace of the revolt against his rule.
Syrian state television said the army hoisted the flag near the post office, the only government...
May 4th, 20180BEIRUT — Syrian militants accepted a deal on Wednesday to quit their enclave near Homs city, a militant official said, as the Syrian army crushes the last two besieged insurgent pockets in the country.
The agreement, which Russia brokered, would restore state rule, with fighters handing over their heavy weapons, the Syrian official...
April 11th, 20180WASHINGTON/BEIRUT — President Trump warned Russia on Wednesday of imminent military action in Syria over a suspected poison gas attack, declaring that missiles “will be coming” and lambasting Moscow for standing by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Trump was reacting to a warning from Russia on Tuesday that any U.S. missiles...
April 10th, 20180WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO ―Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg started testifying before Congress on Tuesday as he looks to fend off the possibility of new regulations as a result of the privacy scandal engulfing his social network.
The 33-year-old internet mogul faces tough questioning from a joint hearing of the U.S....
April 6th, 20180Turkey, Iran and Russia pledge to work for stability in Syria
ANKARA — Turkey, Iran and Russia pledged on Wednesday to accelerate efforts to bring stability to Syria, underlining their joint commitment to the country a day after President Trump raised the prospect of withdrawing U.S. troops.
A statement by the three countries after...
March 30th, 20180MOSCOW — Russia expelled 60 U.S. diplomats on Thursday and announced it would eject scores from other countries that have joined London and Washington in censuring Moscow over the poisoning of a spy.
The U.S. ambassador was also ordered to shut the consulate in St. Petersburg, in Russia's retaliation for the biggest expulsion of...
March 30th, 20180BEIRUT — The massive Russian-backed Syrian military offensive in the suburbs east of Damascus is almost over, with rebels holed up in just a single town after abandoning the rest of the eastern Ghouta enclave, Moscow declared on Thursday.
Russia and the rebel faction controlling Douma, the last Ghouta town still in insurgent hands,...
March 26th, 20180BEIRUT - Syrian rebel factions are blaming each other for opening the way to their defeat near Damascus, underlining splits that plagued the armed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad since its earliest days.
The rivalry between the factions of eastern Ghouta - Failaq al-Rahman and Jaish al-Islam - had led to the effective...
March 13th, 20180MOSCOW - Russia said on Tuesday it had information that the United States planned to bomb the government quarter in Damascus on an invented pretext, and said it would respond militarily if it felt Russian lives were threatened by such an attack.
Rebels in the enclave of eastern Ghouta were planning to fake a chemical weapons attack...
March 2nd, 20180GENEVA — A Russian plan for a five-hour pause in fighting in Syria's eastern Ghouta needs to be expanded to allow aid deliveries to enter and civilians and urgent medical cases to leave, United Nations officials said on Thursday.
In one of the fiercest onslaughts of Syria's seven-year civil war, hundreds of people have died in 11...
March 2nd, 20180BEIRUT - Syrian government forces have gained ground from rebels at the edge of the eastern Ghouta region near Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday, in a ground assault that has continued despite a Russian plan for daily ceasefires.
The Syrian army and rebel sources could not immediately be reached for...
March 2nd, 20180MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin announced an array of new nuclear weapons on Thursday, in one of his most bellicose speeches in years, saying they could hit almost any point in the world and evade a U.S.-built missile shield.
Putin was speaking ahead of an election on March 18 that polls indicate he should win easily. He said a...
February 23rd, 20180The United Nations Security Council will vote on Friday on a draft resolution demanding a 30-day truce in Syria to allow aid deliveries and medical evacuations, but it was not immediately clear if the text had won the support of Syrian ally Russia.
The vote comes as warplanes pounded eastern Ghouta, the last rebel enclave near Syria's...
February 9th, 20180DAMASCUS/ANKARA — The leaders of Turkey, Russia and Iran agreed on Thursday to meet in Istanbul to discuss the conflict in Syria, a Turkish presidential source said.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan discussed the meeting in two phone calls on Thursday with the Russian and Iranian presidents, the source said. The date of the summit...
February 3rd, 20180DAMASCUS/MOSCOW - Syrian rebels shot down a Russian warplane on Saturday and killed its pilot on the ground after he ejected from the plane, Russia’s defense ministry and Syrian rebels said.
The SU-25 came down in an area of northern Idlib province that has seen heavy air strikes and fighting on the ground between Syria’s...
February 2nd, 20180ISTANBUL — Syria's opposition will cooperate with proposals made at a Russia-hosted conference this week to rewrite the country's constitution as long as the process remains under U.N. auspices, the chief opposition negotiator said on Thursday.
Participants at Tuesday's meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in Russia - which is a...
January 26th, 20180VIENNA — U.N.-brokered peace talks with the Syrian government and the opposition began on Thursday, a few days before separate negotiations hosted by Damascus's close ally Russia that the West views with suspicion.
"The meeting was good," the head of the Syrian government delegation, Bashar al-Ja'afari, told Reuters as he left the...
January 12th, 20180BEIRUT — Fighting raged in Idlib, where the Syrian government forces offensive has gathered pace in the last two weeks, according to rebels and a military media unit run by Lebanon's Hezbollah, which is fighting on the Syrian government side.
Idlib province is the biggest chunk of Syria still held by rebels fighting the Syrian army,...
January 5th, 20180MOSCOW — Russia denied a report in daily newspaper Kommersant that seven Russian planes had been destroyed by rebel shelling at Syria's Hmeymim air base on Dec. 31, the TASS news agency quoted the defense ministry as saying on Thursday.
At least four Su-24 bombers, two Su-35S fighters and an An-72 transport plane, as well as an...
January 4th, 20180MOSCOW - Russia considers a U.S. proposal for an extraordinary meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the turmoil in Iran “harmful and destructive”, RIA news agency cited Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Thursday.
“We see no role for the United Nations Security Council in this issue,” he said,...
December 15th, 20170GENEVA — Syrian government negotiator Bashar al-Ja'afari accused a Syrian opposition group, backed by Western countries and Saudi Arabia, of sabotaging a round of U.N.-led peace talks that ended in Geneva on Thursday without any results.
He said Damascus did not want the talks to fail, but the opposition had put down a precondition...
