Citing Turkish intelligence, the mass media has reported that pro-Iranian forces in Syria have been activated in the wake of the US’s assassination of the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. According to Turkish intelligence, Iranian divisions and several armed groups linked to Iran’s activity have been deployed on the border of the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

If the Turkish sources are to be believed, then soldiers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are also being …

The ideal time to hold elections in the Donbas would be in parallel with local elections in the rest of Ukraine in autumn, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko told Bild in an interview, a translation of which was published on the Foreign Ministry website.

He pointed out that Ukraine has already agreed to enshrine the so-called Steinmeier Formula in its legislation, but this does not mean that the elections will be held under any and all circumstances.

“Ideally, these elections should …

Ukraine will look into the possibility that the Ukrainian International Airlines passenger aircraft was downed by a missile launched from a Russian-made missile defense system Tor and intends to look for the wreckage of the missile, wrote the Secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov on his Facebook page.

Danilov said that the Ukrainian State Investigative Commission, consisting of 45 people from 12 ministries and departments, has arrived in Tehran. …

Nord Stream 2’s operator company and the other companies supporting the project are continuing to work to have the pipeline commissioned as soon as possible, Izvestia reports, citing the operator company, Nord Stream 2 AG.

The company’s press service clarified that, while the Swiss pipe-laying company Allseas has stopped working on the project, roughly 2,300 km of the 2,460 km gas pipeline have already been laid on the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

Izvestia noted that, at the end of November, …

The US military has abandoned two bases in north-eastern Syria and is moving towards Iraq, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reports, citing a correspondent in the region.

According to the agency, about 40 trucks left the Khorab Jayr base in Syria’s al-Hasakah province. Another 50 trucks departed from the base in the city of Shaddadi. SANA reports that they are moving towards the Al Waleed border crossing on the border with Iraq.

On January 8, Iran attacked US bases in Iraq. According to the …

A Ukrainian naval helicopter spotted a Russian coast guard ship in the Sea of Azov which was collecting reconnaissance data, Ukraine’s Joint Forces Operation headquarters reported on Facebook.

“During planned work to illuminate the underwater and surface situation, a helicopter from the Naval Aviation Brigade spotted at a distance of around 10 nautical miles a ship belonging to the Russian FSB coast guard which was gathering intelligence,” the report states.

After making several fly-bys, the …

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan commissioned the Turkish Stream gas pipeline at an opening ceremony on Wednesday.

As he turned the symbolic valve, Putin put an end to the project which grew out of the wreckage of South Stream, and in which the Kremlin was hoping to see the long-awaited replacement of transit through Ukraine.

These hopes were in vain. Initially Gazprom was expecting a pipe with four lines, each with a capacity of 15.75 billion …

The passenger plane belonging to the company Ukraine International Airlines was shot down "by mistake" by Iranian air defense forces, reports the Arab newspaper Al Hadath, citing an unnamed source.

The Iranian authorities have already rushed to declare that they were not involved in the crash of the Ukrainian airliner, stressing that the plane crashed due to technical problems.

The Boeing 737, en route from Tehran to Kyiv, crashed in the early hours of January 8 near the Iranian capital's …