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...
December 2nd, 20170GENEVA — The Syrian government delegation arrived in Geneva on Wednesday to participate in another round of U.N.-sponsored peace talks to bring an end to the Syrian Civil War, now in its seventh year.
All the previous rounds of U.N.-backed peace talks have failed to reach a peace deal, and have often been seriously hindered by the...
November 27th, 20170BEIRUT — A breakthrough in U.N.-backed Syria peace talks in Geneva this week seems hardly more likely than in seven failed earlier rounds as President Bashar al-Assad pushes for total military victory and his opponents stick by their demand he leave power.
U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura said on Monday the Syrian government had...
November 21st, 20170MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to talk about the need to move from military operations to the search for a political solution to Syria’s conflict, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.
Russia is actively trying to build an international consensus around a peace deal for Syria, over two years...
October 31st, 20170WASHINGTON - Federal investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election charged President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another aide, Rick Gates, with money laundering on Monday.
A third former Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty in early October to lying to the FBI, it was...
October 30th, 20170WASHINGTON ― Paul Manafort, a former campaign manager for President Trump, and an associate were indicted by a federal grand jury on 12 counts including conspiracy against the United States and money laundering, the federal special counsel’s office said on Monday.
The charges were the first arising from the investigation by Justice...
October 24th, 20170NEW YORK - Russia cast a veto at the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday preventing the renewal of the mandate for a mission that investigates the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
Russia wanted to discuss the report by the Joint Investigative Mechanism before voting on the extension of the mandate
The investigation by the...
September 13th, 20170BEIRUT/MOSCOW — The Lebanese group Hezbollah has declared victory in the Syrian war while Russia said government forces had driven militants from much of the country where President Bashar al-Assad’s rule seemed in danger two years ago.
The comments from two Syrian government allies mark the most confident assessments yet of...
July 28th, 20170Israel, which has played a precarious role in the Syrian war since 2011, is furious to learn that the future of the conflict is not to its liking.
The six-year-old Syria war is moving to a new stage, perhaps its final. The Syrian regime is consolidating its control over most of the populated centers, while ISIS is losing ground fast...
June 12th, 20171AUGUSTA, GA.- A U.S. intelligence contractor accused of illegally leaking a classified report on Russian interference in U.S. elections to a media outlet pleaded not guilty on Thursday to an espionage offense, and a federal judge denied her request for bail.
Reality Leigh Winner, 25, is accused of passing the top secret National...
June 12th, 20171WASHINGTON- Former FBI Director James Comey accused President Donald Trump on Thursday of firing him to try to undermine the agency's investigation of possible collusion by Trump's campaign with Russia's alleged efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election.
In the most eagerly anticipated U.S. congressional hearing in years,...
May 19th, 20170WASHINGTON — On Wednesday, the Justice Department named former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion between President Trump's campaign and Moscow.
The move followed a week in which the White House was thrown into an uproar amid...
May 5th, 20170SOCHI, RUSSIA — On Wednesday, the leaders of Russia and Turkey publicly re-affirmed their commitment to working together to end the conflict in Syria, despite a gas attack on a Syrian city that tested their fragile alliance
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Tayyip Erdogan, have formed a pact on Syria...
April 14th, 20170MOSCOW - Moscow and Washington have reached an understanding that further US strikes similar to the one carried out against Syria's Shayrat Air Base "should not occur again," the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
Lavrov emphasized that this issue was raised during his discussions with the US Secretary of State on...
April 9th, 20170DAMASCUS, Syria - A joint command center made up of the forces of Russian, Iran and allied militia alliance supporting Syrian President Bashar al Assad said the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base crossed "red lines" and it would now respond to any new aggression and increase their level of support to their ally.
"What America waged in...
January 29th, 20170
ASTANA ― Syria's warring sides met for their first talks in nine months on Monday, with their Russian and Turkish backers pushing to cement a ceasefire that could pave the way for political talks.
The meeting in the Kazakh capital comes at a time when Turkey, which backs the rebels, and Russia, which supports Syrian President Bashar...
