25 years ago, Hungary was being toasted in the West for opening its border with Austria to East Germans, in a move which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now the Western elites are not happy with Budapest which they consider far too independent. The refusal of Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz party to join the new US and EU Cold War against Russia, which has seen the Hungari [...]

NATO and Afghan officials are disputing an airstrike in E. Afghanistan that killed at least seven people. An Afghan official said all the dead were civilians, including a 12-year-old child, but NATO said the "precision" strike only killed militants. Abdul Wali Sahi, deputy governor of Paktia province, told Reuters that villagers had found seven bodies in the Udkey area of Gardez city and brough [...]

The US goal in the Ukrainian conflict is to put up a dividing line between NATO states and Russia and create the Transatlantic political, economic and military community, John Laughland of the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris told RT. US Vice President Joe Biden in his speech to Harvard University's Institute of Politics last week admitted that the US government pushed the EU to [...]

The new President of Afghanistan Ghani Ahmadzai has paved the way for US troops to stay in the country. He has signed a security deal with the US, which will see just under 10,000 American soldiers present, to help train and assist Afghan forces. National security adviser Hanif Atmar and U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham signed the bilateral security agreement in a televised ceremony at the pres [...]

Berlin would not currently be able to keep its defense promises to its NATO allies, Germany's defense minister Ursula von der Leyen told Bild am Sonntag. “With our airborne systems we are currently below the target figures announced one year ago, defining what we would want to make available to NATO within 180 days in the case of an emergency,” von der Leyen stated. [...]

As the British parliament votes for yet another catastrophic war in the Middle East, it feels like all of the lessons that were apparently never learned after the disastrous occupations of Iraq, and Afghanistan, are set to be repeated. Recalling parliament over the crisis in Iraq, Prime Minister David Cameron stated during Friday’s debate that the “mission” could be extended to include ai [...]

The CIA's European Division has halted its operations in Western Europe in response to several spying scandals in Germany and the continent's negative reaction to the revelations of spying by the National Security Agency on European leaders and citizens. The stand-down order has been in effect for two months. [...]

The British establishment is breathing a collective sigh of relief. The people of Scotland have chosen Westminster rule over political sovereignty, and the Union remains intact. Scotland’s pro-independence campaigners, bent on separatism and self-determination, claimed they had the momentum to realize an independent Scottish state. But they were mistaken. [...]

NATO is launching exercises in the international waters of the Balkans, with warships and troops of several member countries also "visiting" Bulgaria until September 22. It comes as a new submarine enters service in the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Starting Friday, naval exercises will take place in the southeast of Constanta, off the territorial waters of Romania. Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 � [...]

A total of 1,300 troops from 15 nations, either active NATO members or would-be members, have come together for a military exercise in western Ukraine – even as the fragile truce in the east of the country barely holds. The exercise, code-named “Rapid Trident” has been an annual event since 2006, and has been organized by the Germany-based US European Command (EUCOM). It was initially pla [...]

UK airstrikes against Islamic State extremists in Syria could be illegal without the agreement of President Bashar Assad's government or a UN Security Council resolution, according to a House of Commons Library assessment. Prime Minister David Cameron will recall MPs to parliament to outline his plans for deeper military intervention in Iraq and Syria when he returns from the UN General Assembl [...]

NATO member states have started supplying weapons to Ukraine, the country's Defense Minister said on TV. His comments came a few days after a similar statement by a Ukrainian presidential aide sparked a diplomatic scandal and a rash of denials. In an interview with Channel 5, Ukrainian Defense Minister Valery Geletey said that he had held verbal consultations with the defense ministers of the � [...]

Sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and the EU are a part of a larger military agenda agreed by NATO in a summit 2014, Michel Chossudovsky, of the Centre for Research and Globalisation, told RT, calling such a strategy economic and financial warfare. Despite the truce in Ukraine, the EU and the US went ahead with fresh rounds of sanctions – why was the de-escalation of the conflict in the e [...]

Members from both sides of the US political spectrum say a Yes vote in Scotland's independence referendum may compromise the UK-US strategic relationship. A weakening of Washington's top military ally and the fate of the UK's nuclear arsenal are key. Representative Bradley Sherman [D-CA], who has vocally opposed the prospect of Scotland breaking away from the UK, said America’s foreign policy [...]

Russia is not going to get involved in a new arms race, President Vladimir Putin said as he ordered his government to work out “balanced and realistic” defense strategy for 2016 through 2025. “Someone really wants to unleash a new arms race,” Russia’s president said at a meeting with senior defense industry officials. “We, of course, are not going to be involved in this race.” [...]

After international summits end, there is always a collective sigh of relief. So it was with the NATO meeting in Wales that ended on September 5. All NATO leaders got something out of the Euro-Atlantic gathering, even if it wasn’t what they had wanted during the run-up to the summit. There were reassurances for NATO’s Eastern European members and promises of technical assistance to Ukraine [...]

Ukrainian and American naval forces are taking part in joint maritime drills dubbed Sea Breeze 2014, which began on Monday in the northwestern part of the Black Sea and will last till September 10. “Today in the north-west part of the Black Sea, we are beginning the joint Navy exercises of Ukraine and the US, known as ‘Sea Breeze 2014’. The exercises will continue until September 10. The [...]

Arms firms that provide core military components for drones deployed by the US to conduct covert strikes in violation of international law allegedly bought access to NATO's summit in Wales last week, a British human rights charity says. The defense companies concerned doled out up to £300,000 to ‘exhibit’ their military wares at the conference in Newport. Among the firms present were Gener [...]

As the ceasefire in Ukraine gets off to a shaky start, the only way to rebuild the billions of dollars of damage in the nation's east is for the EU and Russia to work together, Lode Vanoust, former MP and deputy speaker of the Belgium parliament, told RT. First off, Kiev has now agreed to what appears to be a major concession, decentralization of power, which wasn’t even on the negotiating ta [...]

We are at the beginning of an epoch where at some point in the future there could be an open war between the advanced powers, and there is not much faith in the ceasefire in Ukraine, Samir Dathi, National Officer of the Stop the War Coalition, told RT. Ukraine's President is confident about a ceasefire - do you think he's right to be? [...]

Moscow has accused NATO of using the Ukrainian crisis as a “pretext” to “push its military presence closer to Russia’s borders,” and says that plans for a new rapid response force will sabotage the peace process in eastern Ukraine. “The [expansion] plans have been harbored by NATO for a long time, and recent events have served as a pretext to put them into action,” said a statemen [...]

United States President Barack Obama said Friday that the US and European Union are still prepared to impose sanctions against Russia if the crisis in Ukraine continues to escalate following the signing of a ceasefire agreement. Speaking in Newport, Wales at the close of a major NATO alliance summit, Pres. Obama expressed skepticism over a pact signed only hours earlier in Minsk during a meetin [...]