U.S. and NATO officials said that the Russian military was shadowing U.S. ships participating in a multinational exercise in the Adriatic Sea, adding that “outside observance” wasn’t unusual and not necessarily related to rising tensions over Ukraine. The comments Wednesday came as the U.S. announced that it will send 3,000 …

The pre-dawn raid Thursday by U.S. special operations forces in northeastern Syria was designed to capture the leader of the Islamic State group, who instead blew himself up along with members of his family rather than be taken alive, top Pentagon officials said. Elite American troops spent months planning and …

A central theme of the 2017 U.S. National Security Strategy is the “growing political, economic, and military competitions” that the United States faces, including with Russia. Russia’s annexation of Crimea made it clear how far Moscow would go to advance its interests, including redrawing internationally recognized borders. This Perspective presents …

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has obtained a €10.6 million loan from a Hungarian bank to finance her presidential election campaign, according to RTL radio on Wednesday. This comes after the presidential candidate for Rassemblement National said she was having trouble obtaining bank loans at home. Le Pen’s party …

US/Russia Diplomatic row between Moscow and Washington over Russian military build-up in Ukraine and European security more broadly escalated. As U.S. and Russia continued negotiations during month, notably in swiss city Geneva 10 Jan, Moscow continued to demand legally binding guarantees from U.S. and NATO against Ukraine’s accession to NATO …

Ukraine U.S. rejected Russian demands for legal guarantees prohibiting NATO expansion, while tensions over Russian military build-up continued ahead of planned military exercises in Feb. After Moscow 15 Dec proposed to U.S. draft agreement on security guarantees that included provision not to expand NATO eastward, U.S. 26 Jan provided written …

The Kremlin is ramping up a disinformation offensive aimed at demoralizing Ukraine and Western powers, using Russian state-owned broadcasters and trolls on social media platforms to portray the West as the aggressor and the government in Kyiv as a puppet of NATO, say Western officials and information war experts. Scare …

U.S. intelligence agencies may have ruled out the idea that a rash of mysterious illnesses plaguing American diplomats and other officials is part of a sustained campaign by one of Washington’s adversaries, but they now say that in a small number of cases the only likely explanation is the use …

Ukraine says Russian forces near its border are not yet large enough to conduct a full-scale invasion, even as the United States continues to insist an attack could be “imminent.” Russia has amassed more than 100,000 combat-ready troops and heavy equipment near Ukraine and in Crimea in what the United …

Pakistan’s military said Wednesday that “terrorists” had assaulted two of its bases in southwestern Baluchistan province, killing at least one soldier and four assailants in the ensuing gun battles. A separatist militant group, known as Baluch Liberation Army (BLA), took responsibility for staging the coordinated late-evening raids against the paramilitary …