The Syrian troops in Daesh-besieged Deir ez-Zor have significantly improved their positions thanks to Russian airstrikes, the Russian General Staff said. Russian Aerospace Forces' Tu-22M3 aircraft have carried out 36 sorties, during which they destroyed 34 terrorist facilities near the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor, Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi, chief of the Russian General Staff Main Operational [...]

Britain's sale of arms to Saudi Arabia is facing its greatest legal challenge to date, with the UK High Court hearing a judicial review against the exports as campaigners accuse London of being complicit in civilian deaths inflicted as part of Riyadh's military campaign in Yemen. [...]

Commenting on the recent US media reports that nearly two-thirds of US Navy's strike fighters can't fly due to undergoing maintenance and that there is a lack of funds available to fix them, Russian defense analysts explain what might be behind such reports. [...]

Commenting on Fox News host Bill O’Reilly's recent remarks about President Putin and his further theatrical refusal to apologize for the groundless insult, Russian political analyst Mikhail Sinelnikov-Orishak told Sputnik that such boorishness has long become a characteristic feature of today's American journalism. [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law on the ratification of the agreement with Ankara on the Turkish Stream gas pipeline. The lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, ratified the agreement on January 20, while the upper house, the Federation Council, ratified the document on February 1. [...]

Former Polish President Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the influential leader of the country's ruling Law and Justice Party, has some frank advice for Kiev, telling Ukrainian officials that the country would never join Europe if it continued to try to build its national identity on the glorification of notorious Nazi-allied war criminals like Stepan Bandera. [...]

While 2016 showed some promise that global politics in 2017 can improve, much will depend on the first steps of the US' new administration, according to the Head of the Russian Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev, who spoke to RIA Novosti about two possible models of global development in 2017. [...]

German intelligence was unable to produce any conclusive evidence of Russia waging a disinformation campaign against Berlin, and not for lack of trying. Having spent nearly one year on a joint investigation, the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) have failed to produce any conclusive evidence of Russia perpetrating [...]

As the political backlash grows over President Trump’s travel ban, the US Department of Justice is set to face off with its opponents in a federal appeals court. Its lawyers will argue that suspending the executive order puts national security at risk. [...]

Russian jets have not carried out any airstrikes on the Syrian city of Idlib, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman has said, accusing the Western media of spreading false stories. “The warplanes of the Russian Aerospace Forces have not conducted a single airstrike against the city of Idlib yesterday, or last week, or even since the beginning of 2017,” the ministry’s spokesman, Major Gener [...]

In a recent article for the Turkish newspaper Aydınlık, Ismail Hakki Pekin, former chief of the Turkish General Staff Intelligence Department, warned that Turkey is moving step by step to war. In an interview with Sputnik Turkiey, Pekin commented on his assumption, saying that Ankara has found itself in a difficult situation, particularly due to foreign pressure. [...]

Qatar Airways plane successfully landed in New Zealand’s Auckland after 16-hours-long non-stop flight, the airline said on Monday. According to media reports, the flight lasted 16 hours and 23 minutes, making it the longest commercial non-stop flight in history, with the plane crossing 14,535 kilometers (9,032 miles). [...]

Nearly two-thirds of the US Navy’s fleet of Super Hornet and F/A-18 jet fighters are not airworthy. The aircraft are grounded awaiting parts or maintenance as part of a lack of funding for repairs that has left over half of the Navy’s aircraft on the ground. Money problems have also led to a growing backlog of aircraft that need repairs, and for three years almost every carrier has taken [...]

US military hardware, including M1A2 Abrams battle tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, have arrived in the northern Estonian town of Tapa as part of continued US efforts to counter the alleged Russian threat.   [...]

Russia’s top federal investigative agency has begun a criminal case into the deaths of civilians in Donetsk that were reportedly the result of shelling by Ukrainian government forces on February 1-3. According to Investigative Committee acting chief spokesman Svetlana Petrenko, a criminal case has been launched into the use of illegal methods of warfare. [...]

Leading scholar on US-Russia relations addresses the claim being trumpeted by politicians and media on both sides of the political spectrum that Russia is now the "number one" threat to the United States. Given the proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine, Dr. Cohen tells host Abby Martin that the real alarming danger today is "a new, multi-front Cuban missile crisis." Dr. Stephen Cohen is Professor Eme [...]

Over many decades, the U.S. establishment has become practiced at putting out claims that are completely false or that leave out key details to mislead the public, but now come complaints about “fake news,” observes William Blum. As the Queen in Alice in Wonderland explained, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Or as new Secretary of Defen [...]

President Trump’s chaotic first two weeks have seen senior aides reverse his most promising plans for restoring realism to U.S. foreign policy, especially regarding Russia and the Mideast, reports Daniel Lazare. Well, that didn’t take long, did it? The Trump administration hadn’t even reached its two-week mark when it surrendered a major portion of its independence and fell in behind the [...]

NAPOLITANO: "Yes, Donald Trump has a very strong case. The best case the Democrats have is some people were disaffected to Mrs. Clinton when they read the snarky e-mails of her staff. But what Donald Trump is talking about is there is no evidence that the Russian government did something that affected the outcome of this election. He’s absolutely correct when he says that." [...]

The editor-in-chief of German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel has defended a highly controversial cover depicting US President Donald Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty. He also called on Germany “to build an alliance” against the US leader. [...]

On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration was looking to 'drive a wedge' between Russia and Iran in its effort to improve relations with Moscow while confronting Tehran. Multiple observers, from Russian foreign policy analysts to American paleo-conservatives, warn that a US-Iran clash would be a catastrophic mistake. [...]

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force has begun practicing the deployment of medium-range Dongfeng (DF) missiles capable of reaching strategic US and Japanese bases near China, the latest iteration of Beijing’s war game-preparations for an armed conflict in the South and East China Seas. [...]