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. [...]

US special forces have already deployed to 133 nations in the first half of 2018, signaling a sharp increase in the Pentagon’s shadowy operations when compared to previous years, according to a new report. America’s Special Operations forces (SOF) are stationed all around the world, where they participate in a wide range of missions, including special reconnaissance, unconventional warfare, co [...]

Tucker: Virtually all of official Washington, Republicans and Democrats, have united behind the idea that the United States has a moral obligation to go deeper into war in Syria after a suspected gas attack. Yet, our merely asking obvious questions, we are told to shut up and just obey. Tucker: Why is Washington united behind a war in Syria? Media accuses Tucker of pushing "Russia [...]

Canadian journalist, Eva Barlett, completely dismantled mainstream media’s narrative on events taking place in Syria. The freelance journalist has repeatedly visited Syria since the conflict began in 2011, in a bid to get a sense of the realities on the ground. In a press conference organized on Friday by the Syrian mission to the United Nations, Barlett delivered her remarks regarding the [...]

In 1990, Western politicians repeatedly assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO wouldn’t expand east of Germany’s borders, but broke that promise less than a decade later, say insider archives from both sides of negotiations following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. [...]

Meeting with Donald Trump would be pointless because the deep state – not the president – controls the US, Bashar Assad said in an interview. He noted that the agenda of the deep state is to create conflict aimed against Russia. In an exclusive interview with Athens daily Kathimerini, Assad said there was no reason to meet face-to-face with Trump, since the US president “says something today [...]

Bolivian filmmaker, actress and activist Carla Ortiz, who has traveled across most of Syria, told Sputnik Mundo how the White Helmets operate in the country and why the intervention by certain Western countries is preventing Syria from reaching peace. Carla Ortiz has visited most parts of the Arab country for the making of her film "Voice of Syria" in order to show the conflict from the point of v [...]

Comey is rightly offended by a president who “treats women like they’re pieces of meat.”  How does he feel about presidents who turn millions of women, girls, boys, and men into corpses, cripples, and refugees in the endless pursuit of U.S. global dominance – this while serving the corporate and financial oligarchy at home, also sold as “freedom” and “democracy”? More [...]

Former CIA director and Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo boasted about killing “a couple hundred Russians” in Syria, saying the move was one of the Trump administration’s key actions to counter Moscow, triggering a social media storm. "The list of actions that this administration has taken — I'm happy to walk through each of them," Outgoing CIA Chief Mike Pompeo said on April 1 [...]

We’ve already heard about US exceptionalism from Albright, Obama, and Clinton, but we are no longer in the 1990s, we are in a multipolar world, says Peter Kuznick, professor of history at American University. Donald Trump's new pick for America's top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, has gone through the required Senate grilling while outlining his view of US foreign policy. [...]

So, the world is counting the hours to see whether the US and its allies will launch a military strike on Syria. If this war plan goes ahead, the attack will be furious - and the repercussions grave, as Russia sternly warned this week. Indeed, we are talking about the very real danger that any US-led military action against Syria will rapidly escalate into a region-wide, or even world war. [...]