François Hollande and Recep Tayyip Erdogan have recently recognized that betting on Obama's administration is like betting on Don Quixote's giants. Hollande, who recently visited the White House seeking Obama's support in fighting ISIL after Paris attacks, has returned empty-handed. [...]

Sputnik is a major new media brand with modern multimedia centers in dozens of countries. Sputnik is uniquely positioned as a provider of alternative news content and as a radio broadcaster. Offering a fuller picture of the world with a truly diverse range of views, Sputnik tells the untold. [...]

Official Washington says it welcomes freedom of thought, but there is a startling absence of diverse opinions especially on key foreign-policy topics, such as Russia’s President Putin. In those cases, shallow “group think” prevails and belligerent “information warfare” rules, as Gilbert Doctorow observes. [...]

The Western narrative has sought to portray Russia as an aggressive regional actor. But Moscow's showcasing of its new military capabilities in Syria suggests that it can project its power at great distances cost-effectively to play a major role in international security. Has this marked a turning point in Russia's relations with the West? Oksana is joined by Mark Galeotti, Professor of Global [...]

Washington will not share intelligence data on Islamic State positions in Syria and will not accept Moscow’s offer to cooperate on rooting out terrorism until Moscow changes its position on Syrian President Bashar Assad’s future, the Pentagon said. [...]

Germany’s Initiative Group wants to provide up to ‎€2 billion to finance the Moscow-Kazan high-speed railway, according to the Vice President of Russian Railways (RZD) Aleksandr Misharin. "We have a proposal from our German colleagues on signing a similar [Russia-China – Ed.] memorandum on cooperation, where they make commitments on financing of up to €2 billion in the project on vari [...]

Since 2003, Moscow has watched with infinite patience as US-led forces have steadily steamrolled a path of chaos and carnage across a large swath of Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. This year Vladimir Putin drew a line at Syria. In an age when diplomats regularly correspond with each other behind the cold cover of firewalls and Twitter accounts, Moscow’s method of informing its [...]

Russian intelligence has spotted up to 12,000 tankers and trucks on the Turkish-Iraqi border, the General Staff of Russia’s armed forces has reported. “The [aerial] imagery was made in the vicinity of Zakho (a city in Iraqi Kurdistan), there were 11,775 tankers and trucks on both sides of the Turkish-Iraqi border,” Lieutenant-General Sergey Rudskoy told journalists on Friday. [...]

In his seminal 'Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization,' Bryan Ward-Perkins writes, "Romans before the fall were as certain as we are today that their world would continue forever... They were wrong. We would be wise not to repeat their complacency.” [...]

The US has ordered 20 additional RD-180 rocket engines from Russia, days after US Congress lifted the ban on the use of Russian engines to get American ships into space. However, the move has been lambasted by some politicians in Washington. [...]

Kiev's attempts to avoid paying back its $3 billion debt to Moscow could end in the country defaulting on its foreign debt. Why didn't Kiev's Western benefactors side with Kiev in the IMF decision on the debt? Sputnik takes a look. On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund board recognized Kiev's outstanding $3 billion debt to Moscow as sovereign, a status Kiev had fiercely contested. [...]

Nobody needs to read Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s 1997 opus to know US foreign policy revolves around one single overarching theme: prevent – by all means necessary – the emergence of a power, or powers, capable of constraining Washington’s unilateral swagger, not only in Eurasia but across the world. The Pentagon carries the same message embedded in newspeak: the Full S [...]

The Most Hypocritical Statement of 2015 awards have lots of strong contenders - but Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has made a dramatic late grasp for glory. He has condemned an attack on Idlib in north-west Syria believed to have been carried out by Russian planes, saying Syrian lands will not be part of "Russian imperialist goals." [...]

Beijing has said political dialogue is the only solution to the conflict in Ukraine, and not sanctions. On Monday, the European Union announced it was prolonging economic sanctions against Russia for another six months, for what it called Moscow’s noncompliance with the terms of a ceasefire agreed in Minsk, Belarus. [...]

he political standoff between the West and Russia has put many through difficult times. Russia is living through a severe crisis, exacerbated by EU sanctions – but that’s as business in Europe also is in trouble, as the loss of a major partner has dealt a blow to prosperity. Can the European Union afford the confrontation, given the state some of its economies are in, and the dissent that is g [...]

Russia didn’t ditch negotiations with Europe over its free trade agreement with Ukraine, said Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. The EU left the negotiations with the words “game over,” which isn’t “very European and intolerant,” according to Putin. [...]

The Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff has been indirectly providing Syrian military with intelligence on Islamic extremists fearing the Obama administration’s agenda to oust Bashar Assad will engender total chaos in Syria.   [...]

The 2015 installment of Vladimir Putin's now-traditional end-of-year Q&A lacked some of the sparkle of previous years. However, the Russian President captivated his audience for over three hours and addressed a host of serious issues. [...]

Russia’s foreign minister said he believes it will be “possible” to establish a transitional unity government in Syria within six months and hold national elections within 18 months. Sergey Lavrov and his US counterpart John Kerry spoke after the UNSC voted for Syria peace plan. [...]

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump responded to Vladimir Putin’s comment, in which the Russian president called Trump “the absolute front-runner,” stating that it was a “great honor” to receive praise from a “highly respected” leader like Putin. “It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond,”Tr [...]

Ukraine has imposed a moratorium on the $3 billion Russian debt repayment, said the country’s Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk at a cabinet meeting on Friday. The announcement comes ahead of the December 20 deadline for the debt redemption. "Considering that Russia has refused, despite our efforts, to sign an agreement on restructuring and to accept our proposals, the cabinet is imposing a mor [...]

The Russian military have invited experts from 14 nations to work on the flight recorder of the Russian Su-24 bomber downed by Turkey, but only two of them accepted their invitations, the Defense Ministry reported, before unsealing the device. [...]