U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in snowbound Kiev on Thursday amid calls for Washington to begin arming Ukraine to battle Russian-backed separatists advancing in the east.
The U.S.-led air war against Islamic State militants has frozen the immediate threat from that group, and now is the time for Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated government to mend its rift with disenfranchised Sunnis, U.S. military officials said on Tuesday.
Separatist rockets streaked across hills in eastern Ukraine on Monday as rebels pounded the positions of Ukrainian government troops holding a strategic rail town, while both sides prepared to mobilise more forces for combat.
Nine months after Russian activist Svetlana Davydova called the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow to warn that Russian soldiers were making their way to Ukraine, an investigator with an order for her arrest showed up at her door.
Civilians were killed on both sides in heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine on Friday, while an attempt to reopen peace talks in neighboring Belarus was aborted before it began.
The chief of Russia's armed forces said on Friday a strong nuclear arsenal will ensure military superiority over the West as Russia seeks to fulfill a multi-billion dollar plan to modernize its forces by 2020.
Russia's foreign ministry on Tuesday dismissed charges by the U.S. against three men for their alleged involvement in a Russian spy ring operating in New York City.
Ex-KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko, who died three months after drinking tea poisoned with a radioactive isotope, told British police that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally behind his killing, an inquiry heard on Tuesday.
Russia prevented the U.N. Security Council on Saturday from criticizing statements by pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels and condemning an upsurge in violence that has claimed dozens of lives in Ukraine, council diplomats said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed "criminal orders" by Ukrainian leaders on Friday for a surge in fighting in east Ukraine, and Russian-backed separatists struck a bellicose tone in ruling out seeking more peace talks.
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill called on Thursday for a deep cut in the "horrifyingly high" number of abortions, which he linked to a Western rejection of moral norms.
European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has suggested EU states could re-engage with Russia on global diplomacy, trade and other issues in return for gradual steps to defuse the crisis over Ukraine.
Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France have decided not to hold a summit on the conflict in Ukraine on Thursday because of a lack of progress in implementing a four-month-old ceasefire agreement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to join world leaders gathering at the site of the Auschwitz death camp this month because distrust caused by the conflict in Ukraine has cast a pall on arrangements to commemorate the Holocaust.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone on Saturday that a four-way summit to discuss the situation in eastern Ukraine would not take place until there was real progress on the Minsk peace plan.
The foreign ministers of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine will meet in Berlin on Monday to discuss the situation in eastern Ukraine and the implementation of the Minsk peace plan, Germany said on Friday.
Germany cast doubt on whether a four-way summit on the Ukraine crisis in Kazakhstan's capital Astana on Jan. 15 would take place on Monday and France's president said the meeting would depend on the likelihood of "new progress" being made.
Ukraine on Friday reported its first military death of 2015 in its conflict with pro-Russian separatists, saying a soldier had been killed and five others wounded in attacks by the rebels.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised New Year's address on Wednesday that the "return home" of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula to Moscow's control would forever remain an important chapter in Russia's history.
The United States plans by the end of next year to station around 150 tanks and armored vehicles in Europe for use by U.S. forces training there, according to a U.S. military commander.
