Russia’s navy announced it will open ‘large-scale drills’ in the Mediterranean on Saturday in the latest sign that a major Syrian government offensive against one of the last rebel strongholds in the country is imminent — a development that the United Nations warns could trigger a fresh refugee crisis in the Middle East nation’s 7-year-old civil war.
Saudi FM Adel Al-Jubeir said during a press conference with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov that ‘we have come to an agreement with Russia regarding continued coordination concerning regional developments. We made it clear that we support additional sanctions on Iran.’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday described militants in Syria’s last big rebel-held enclave of Idlib as a ‘festering abscess’ that needed to be liquidated.
NATO confirmed a large-scale Russian navy buildup in the Mediterranean Sea off Syria on Tuesday. ‘The Russian Navy has dispatched substantial naval forces to the Mediterranean, including several ships equipped with modern cruise missiles,’ NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu confirmed to Haaretz in a statement.
Russia will flex its military muscles and hold the biggest war games since the Cold War era next month, including almost 300,000 troops and 1,000 aircraft, the Russian defense ministry said Tuesday, leading NATO to warn of a ‘more assertive Russia.’
The Russian Ministry of Defence said on Monday it had noticed Washington was building up its military forces in the Middle East in preparation for what Moscow feared was a possible strike on Syrian government forces, Russian news agencies reported.
The Russian government is warning of a staged gas attack by Syrian rebels in Idlib. Experts doubt the validity of that information, however, and see the move as a telltale sign of desperation in Moscow.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will visit Iran on Sept 7, his office said on Monday, on a trip expected to include a three-way summit with Russian and Iranian leaders.
Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen emphatically stated a year ago that he saw no evidence that the president colluded with Russia during the campaign.
Special counsel Robert Mueller has now won or assisted in guilty pleas or convictions against a number of figures in the president’s inner circle during the 2016 campaign — but has yet to prove a more fundamental case of Russia-Trump collusion.
Russia’s military forces in the country’s east were put on high alert Monday ahead of massive war games that also involve China and Mongolia, the largest show of power in nearly 40 years, the Russian defense minister said.
A few months ago, ‘Ophir,’ a senior official with a rich intelligence background turned private cybersecurity expert, was called back to duty.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told the United States that his country would like Iranian forces to withdraw from Syria but cannot force them out, US President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said on Wednesday, despite Israeli calls for Iran to leave immediately.
Facebook has identified and banned hundreds of accounts, groups and pages engaged in misleading political behavior, a far larger discovery than a ‘sophisticated’ effort it reported three weeks ago with great fanfare.
The conviction of Paul Manafort and guilty plea by Michael Cohen on Tuesday fortified both the pro- and anti-Trump camps in the political war over special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
White House National Security Adviser John Bolton arrived in Israel Sunday and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for talks focused mainly on Iran.
New British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on Tuesday (Aug 21) will urge the United States and European countries to do more to call out Russia’s ‘malign behavior’ and keep Vladimir Putin in check, notably by implementing tough sanctions.
Russian air defense assets in Syria have downed 45 drones targeting their main base in the country, its military said Thursday, after an attack by the Islamic State group on a Syrian army base a day earlier killed seven troops.
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘agreed in principle’ during their latest meeting in Helsinki last month that Iranian forces should leave Syria, according to a report in Bloomberg.
Russia has deployed a suspicious satellite the United States says is part of Moscow’s plans to attack orbiting satellites in a future conflict, a State Department official revealed in Geneva on Tuesday.