About 14,000 illegal migrants, who were awaiting deportation, simply disappeared off the radar, Swedish police told local media, adding they “don’t know where these asylum seekers are.” At the end of October, Swedish police asked to enforce deportation of at least 21,748 people. Of these, 14 140 people registered by police as 'wanted' have vanished, police told Swedish Aftonbladet tablo [...]

Russia could freeze the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project for several years in response to Turkey shooting down a Russian jet in Syria, Reuters reported on Wednesday citing sources from Gazprom. According to the sources no decision has been taken by Gazprom about changes to the project’s schedule, but the company was awaiting instructions from President Putin. [...]

A group of Eastern European countries has sent a letter to the European Commission calling to block the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany bypassing Ukraine. They say it goes against the EU’s energy diversification and security policies. The countries against Gazprom’s deal with Berlin are headed by Slovakia and Poland who are believed to have initiated the campaign. They are [...]

Turkey’s leadership, including President Erdogan and his family, is involved in illegal oil trade with Islamic State militants, says the Russian Defense Ministry, stressing that Turkey is the final destination for oil smuggled from Syria and Iraq. The Russian Defense Ministry held a major briefing on new findings concerning IS funding in Moscow on Wednesday. [...]

As EU leaders met with the Turkish PM to finalize a €3 billion ($3.18bn) deal on easing the Syrian refugee crisis, his Greek counterpart criticized Turkey’s “mercurial” pilots for airspace violations that cost billions but in no way help to tackle people-smuggling through borders on the ground. Alexis Tsipras took to Twitter to point out that it was ironic that while having billions of [...]

A Russian warplane recently entered Israeli-controlled airspace from Syria, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon told local media. The brief intrusion was resolved quietly, with Yaalon noting “we must not automatically react and shoot them down when an error occurs." "There was a slight intrusion a mile (1.6 kilometers) deep by a Russian plane from Syria into our airspace, but it was immedia [...]

The first time a NATO member has downed a Russian plane in a half-century. Turkey has shot down a Russia jet, and the two pilots were reportedly killed. What will be the fallout of this, coming at this sensitive time on the war on Syria? In this edition of the debate, we’ll discuss what possible motives Turkey would have by this act, and how this would impact the Vienna talks held over Syria [...]

The downing of the Russian Su-24 by Turkish fighter jets and NATO's reaction to the incident have demonstrated clearly the misuse and misquotation of international law by apologists for the US and its allies, Australian-based Barrister at Law James O'Neill stresses. [...]

Turkey is a pawn in a NATO geostrategic game against Russia; Ankara has long been supporting ISIL on behalf of Washington, profiting from Syria's stolen oil, according to independent researcher and writer Timothy Alexander Guzman. Independent researcher and writer Timothy Alexander Guzman underscores that Turkey's provocation against Russia "is not surprising at all," claiming that Washington [...]

The tragedy of Paris seems to have accelerated long-awaited political changes: "the United States can no longer play its self-declared hegemonic, or only super-power, role in the world, and Russia has returned to the center stage of world affairs", according to NYU political science professor Stephen Cohen. [...]

In what is a prime example of twisted logic, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Russia against using its ultra-modern S-400 air defense system to shoot down Turkish fighter jets if they violate Syrian airspace just days after Ankara brought down a Russian Su-24 bomber. Downing a Turkish warplane over Syrian territory would qualify as aggression, Erdogan told CNN in response to a question on [...]

While Britain's Prince Charles has recently blamed the Syrian crisis on global climate change, the ongoing strife prompts many questions; what lies at the root of the Syrian war and what information was contained in secret dossiers which Putin handed Western leaders at the G20, political analyst Phil Butler asks. [...]

Turkey playing dirty in Syria is no secret. The true goal Ankara is pursuing in Syria is becoming a regional power and the country that rules the Sunni Muslim world, journalist Riccardo Peliliccetti wrote for his article in Il Giornale. Over the course of his 20 years of ruling Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has Islamized the country and launched a policy of expansionism. [...]

After announcing that Germany would not place limits on the number of asylum-seekers it accepts, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is now considering a quota system. The turnaround wasn't her choice. In early September, German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued an order to bring thousands of refugees who were stranded in Hungary to Germany. Germany's basic right to asylum has no upper limits, she said [...]

President Barack Obama – always sensitive to neocon criticism that he’s “weak” – continues to edge the world closer to a nuclear confrontation with Russia as he talks tough and tolerates more provocations against Moscow, now including Turkey’s intentional shoot-down of a Russian warplane along the Turkish-Syrian border. [...]

A Syrian rebel commander who boasted of killing a Russian pilot after Turkey downed Russian jet on Tuesday appeared to be Turkish ultranationalist and a son of former mayor in one of Turkish provinces. Alparslan Celik, deputy commander of a Syrian Turkmen brigade turned out to be the son of a mayor of a Keban municipality in Turkey’s Elazig province. [...]

Paris spoke harshly about the downing of a Russian Su-24 warplane by Turkey during the discussions at a NATO Council meeting on November 24, a diplomatic source said Friday. ATHENS — Following the incident, NATO expressed solidarity with Turkey and offered support for Ankara saying that the Alliance's assessments of the incident were consistent with information provided by the country, which [...]

The NATO aggression against Russia, which was expressed in the form of an attack on the Russian Su-24 bomber, could not occur without the approval of the alliance’s senior management, noted Christopher Black, an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. “The murder of one of the pilots, shot by ISIS [ISIL] terrorists while parachuting to the ground, is a war crime for which Turkey and [...]

Turkey's aggressive strike on the Russian Su-24 has clearly demonstrated the impotent rage of those who planned to redraw the map of the Middle East, British political writer and journalist Dan Glazebrook emphasizes. Syria appears to be a hard nut to crack for the "regime change camp," British political writer and journalist Dan Glazebrook notes, adding that Turkey's shooting down of the Russia [...]