This comes after reports of the United States being engaged in direct contact with members of Venezuela's military, encouraging them to pledge allegiance to self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido, while also working on new sanctions to ramp up pressure on Nicolas Maduro. [...]

The Trump administration is openly engaging in a blatant effort to overthrow the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. It’s a campaign aimed at regime change, and it’s being publicly promoted as an opportunity to steal Venezuelan oil for the benefit of U.S. corporations. They’re not even pretending. But this is not some insane Twitter thought spewed by Trump after guzzling down gallo [...]

As the former British prime minister Harold Macmillan would have put it, "It's not one damned thing, it's one damned thing after another." For the European Union, Italy has become that turbulent priest of whom they wish they could be rid, the fly in the ointment, the spanner in the works of neo-liberalism and war. [...]

The US was in breach of the INF treaty for years, the Russia’s defense ministry told the summoned US diplomat, calling on the US to destroy cruise missile launchpads, target-missiles and attack drones to return to INF compliance. [...]

Large numbers of Venezuelan citizens have come out to sign a petition against possible US intervention, as government activists began gathering signatures for a campaign to showcase “support for peace” amid mounting threats. [...]

Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech sent mixed messages about where the president stands on foreign policy, analysts told RT, as his anti-intervention views clash with his threats against Iran and Venezuela. [...]

An envoy to the US for Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó has said the country’s oil reserves would be opened to foreign investors, bolstering suspicions that Washington’s support of Guaidó is oil-dependent. [...]

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump lambasted America’s endless and wasteful wars. But as president, he has surrounded himself with individuals who have made defending and advancing American empire a full-time career. Why did Trump cave and what could be the consequences for him and his presidency? CrossTalking with George Szamuely, Jeff Deist, and Lee Spieckerman. [...]

The option of sending the US military to Venezuela is on the table, while talking to President Nicolas Maduro is not, President Donald Trump said in an interview on Sunday. While talking to CBS' Face the Nation, Trump would not expand on the prospects of military involvement in the crisis in the Latin America country besides replying that "it's an option." [...]

Tensions between Washington and Beijing have escalated in recent months amid a growing number of US Navy "freedom of navigation" missions in the South China Sea and Chinese efforts to beef up its military presence in territories over which several Asian powers have overlapping claims. [...]

Direct talks with the Taliban are crucial for the Kabul government to survive amid crushing defeats by the militants, Afghanistan experts told RT amid expectations that end of the 17-year war is looming. [...]

The controversy around the Sea of ​​Azov has been created out of thin air as Kiev and its Western backers continue to search for new ways to apply pressure on Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said. [...]

Interpol’s new boss is South Korean Kim Jong-yang, although reading the gleeful mainstream coverage of the news, it’s much easier to find out who didn’t get the job — or more specifically, that the losing candidate was Russian. [...]

A prominent international watchdog has launched an online investigative project that will allow Internet users worldwide to track the destruction caused by the US-led coalition's bombardment of Syria's Raqqa in 2017 that has resulted in numerous civilian casualties and the city being nearly completely razed to the ground. [...]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed this week to reveal the “naked truth” about the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi; however, in fact, he didn't uncover anything extraordinary, but why? It is significant that the day before Erdogan’s much-hyped speech to Turkish parliamentarians, President Donald Trump dispatched his CIA chief to Turkey to “investigate” the evidence [...]

President Trump earlier expressed readiness to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, accusing Russia of allegedly breaching it. Moscow has denied the accusations, with Russian President Vladimir Putin warning Washington against deploying US missiles in Europe and promising a "swift and effective response." [...]

America is forever researching and developing new weapons for defending itself against enemies, both real and imagined. Yet it seems to have been taken unawares by a deadly new adversary in the form of suicide in the ranks. Many people have asked themselves at one time or another how soldiers are able to come to grips with the unspeakable horrors they must face as enemy combatants on some foreign [...]

US President Donald Trump has praised Washington's cancellation of $230mn in funding for stabilization in war-torn Syria. Let "other rich countries" pay it, Trump says, while the US spends its money on its military and allies. The US officially ended support for stabilization projects in Syria on Friday. The $230mn worth of funding had been frozen for months before that however, after House forbid [...]

A Raytheon Mark 82 general-purpose free-fall bomb was likely used by the Saudi-led coalition to strike a bus full of children in Yemen on Thursday, a local journalist claims, after bomb fragments from the scene were recovered. A Raytheon Mark 82 general-purpose free-fall bomb was likely used by the Saudi-led coalition to strike a bus full of children in Yemen on Thursday, a local journalist claims [...]

QUITO (Sputnik) - The defense for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who resides at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, is concerned about the Ecuadorian authorities' silence regarding his future, Assange's lawyer Carlos Poveda told Sputnik. "We sent two letters to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry 10 days ago and five days ago respectively and expressed concern about the issue of refusal to grant [...]

A volunteer with the Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, was caught on video dumping the mutilated bodies of Syrian Army troops. The volunteer was summarily fired by the group after he was filmed participating in the dumping of dead pro-Syrian government fighters. [...]

A far-reaching US Defense Department multi-project initiative to “train and equip” personnel around the world for the fight against terrorism (to the tune of billions) has failed to improve the capabilities of local fighters in more than half of its projects, according to a federal watchdog. [...]