Russia's Parliament

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared martial law Wednesday in the four regions of Ukraine that Moscow illegally annexed and given additional emergency powers to the heads of all regions of Russia.

  NATO foreign ministers have vowed that the Western alliance will continue to adapt in the face of "rising threats and systemic competition," and underlined that "Russia's aggressive actions constitute a threat to Euro-Atlantic security."

Billionaire Russian oligarchs and Ukrainian elites accused of corruption are among hundreds of people who have acquired EU passports under controversial "golden visa" schemes, the Guardian has learnt.

Kazakhstan is not conducting negotiations on sending peacekeeping troops to Syria and would only despatch troops there under a United Nations mandate, the Kazakh foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday, cited by Reuters.

Russia announced late on Dec. 16 that it had approved a bill to ratify the Turkish Stream natural gas pipeline project.        

The bill was passed by the Russian government and was sent to the Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, the Kremlin said in a statement.        

Since Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014 and the military operations in eastern Ukraine, the concept of a "Cold War" has become part of our daily lexicon again. While the U.S.-led Western alliance hasn't fully digested the annexation of Crimea and has been busy developing strategies on how to best confront Russian expansionism in Eastern Europe, the Kremlin decided to get directly involved in

Russia is considering plans to resume its military presence in Vietnam and Cuba where Moscow earlier had military bases, Russian news agencies quoted Russian Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov as saying on Oct. 7. 

"We are dealing with this issue," the agencies quoted Pankov as saying in the State Duma lower house of Russia's parliament, according to Reuters. 

President Vladimir Putin has signed a law allowing Russia's Constitutional Court to decide whether or not to implement rulings of international human rights courts. 

The law, published on Dec. 15 on the government website, enables the Russian court to overturn decisions of the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) if it deems them unconstitutional. 

Russia estimates its air strike campaign in Syria could last three to four months, the head of the foreign affairs committee at the State Duma, Russia's parliament, said on Oct.2.

Anyone thinking of any solution to the Syrian conflict must think of a Syria without Bashar al-Assad, Turkish PM Ahmet Davuto?lu said Sept. 30, calling the embattled president "a vicious tyrant".