The cottage industry of ‘experts’ predicting the inevitable demise of Russia for years is ignoring the hard evidence of progress such as the infrastructure projects that the West is unable or unwilling to undertake itself. [...]

Three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the symbols of the Cold War, Europe remains divided because it chose confrontation over a common future, Willy Wimmer, Germany’s former State Secretary for Defense believes. [...]

President Trump has applauded the latest jobs report and its positive effect on stock markets as critics unleashed on him for his failed promise to tame the US government spending spree that pushed the national debt over $23tn. [...]

Aiming to win back public confidence in the Boeing 737 MAX, major US airliners are reportedly planning to hold demonstration flights with senior company officials, but not real passengers, on board to prove the model is safe. [...]

Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden – who, back in the good old Obama administration days, lobbied for the arming of ‘moderate’ rebels in Syria – slammed Trump for downgrading the US military to an oilfield occupation force. “Leaving troops behind like [Trump’s] doing now – he says that what he wants to do is we’re going to occupy the oil fields and we’re going to take [...]

As Prime Minister Boris Johnson gears up for a snap election, his government made a surprise U-turn on shale gas extraction, citing public concerns and technological limits on predicting the impact of fracking on the environment. [...]

BEIRUT (Sputnik) - Lebanese banks resumed operations after a two-week break amid mass anti-government protests that broke out all over the country, a Sputnik correspondent reported from Beirut on Friday. The reopening of the banks was accompanied by long lines of people who wanted to get cash and make transactions and transfers. [...]

On Sunday President Trump announced that Baghdadi had been killed during the US-raid in Idlib. The number one terrorist was reportedly under the Pentagon's surveillance for quite some time before the conditions were ripe to eliminate him. The leader of the Daesh* terrorist group Abu Bakr Baghdadi was "the brainchild of the United States", and his elimination has not yet been confirmed, Russian For [...]

This comes amid US President Trump's announcement that the signing site of the 'phase one' trade deal with China would be announced 'soon'. A World Trade Organization’s arbitrator ruled Friday that China could impose $3.6 billion worth of tariffs on US goods over its unfair anti-dumping practices. [...]

Last month, WikiLeaks published the evidence and testimony provided by an Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) whistleblower who revealed that the watchdog appeared to have wilfully ignored data that the Syrian government did not stage a chemical attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018 in order to fit a convenient narrative. [...]

You may think that when a nation buys US weapons, it gets the tools to scare away or kill its enemies. But according to a US official, Humvees and Patriot missiles have a secret ingredient that the competition lacks: friendship. [...]

The US dollar’s status as the world’s major reserve currency, which it held for decades, could come under threat, according to Anne Korin from the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. “Major movers” such as Russia, China, and the European Union have a strong “motivation to de-dollarize,” Korin, the co-director at the energy and security think tank, told CNBC. [...]

The yet-unconfirmed move would mark yet another blow to the framework of confidence building measures that were put in place in the immediate aftermath of the cold war. US President Donald Trump has moved to pull the United States out of the 1992 Treaty on Open Skies, one of the most comprehensive international agreements on transparency of military activities, according to the Wall Street Journal [...]

China has now more millionaires and unicorns than the US and the tech sector may be the next sphere where Beijing can leave Washington behind, investor Dan Collins told Max Keiser. Most people would assume that the number one city in the world to host tech start-ups is San Francisco, but Beijing was recently ranked as the world’s unicorn capital [...]

Maria Butina, a Russian gun activist who spent months in a US jail for failing to properly register as a foreign agent, has landed in Moscow. Her case sparked outcry in Russia and accusations of “prosecutorial overreach.” She has arrived in Sheremetyevo airport after a long flight from Miami, Florida on Saturday. [...]

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Russian Defense Ministry published satellite intelligence images proving that oil from Syria was sent abroad under the guard of US servicemen before and after the defeat of the Daesh terrorists, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Saturday. [...]

The United States maintains nearly three dozen military bases in Germany, with troops stationed in the country since the end of the Second World War, and long after the end of the Cold War and the withdrawal of Soviet/Russian troops from the country in the early 1990s. [...]

Two Russian Tu-160 strategic bombers and other military aircraft have touched down in South Africa. The planes covered over 11 thousand kilometers to get there, staying in the air for more than 13 hours.  The two Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bombers landed at Waterkloof air force base in Tshwane on Wednesday. Russian Il-62 and An-124 military transport planes have also touched down. [...]

President Trump has been defending his purported withdrawal of US troops from Syria as a triumphant move to “bring our soldiers home”. He says it’s about delivering on his 2016 election promise to “end endless wars”. This is just trite electioneering from Trump. Already it is being admitted this week that the Pentagon is not actually bringing US troops home from Syria. Most of them are b [...]

Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in the Russian city of Sochi to discuss an array of issues, with the situation in Syria and the Turkish military operation there expected to be the main topic of their conversation. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that foreign forces that are currently deployed in Syria unlawfully must leave its territory. He added that Turkey shares this vis [...]

China has been developing Kenya’s rail service as part of the Belt and Road Initiative to connect Asia, Europe and Africa. The railway is Kenya’s largest infrastructure project since its independence. The so-called Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project was launched in 2017. Trains operating on a daily schedule between the port city of Mombasa to Nairobi have already moved up to two million [...]

US forces that crossed into Iraq after pulling out from Syria can only use its territory for transit and do not have permission to stay, the Iraqi military said on Tuesday. Hundreds of military vehicles carrying American troops crossed into the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq in a long convoy on Monday. [...]