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Ukrainians in Lviv station ovation greeted the soldiers who came from the front. awesome VIDEO This is not an advertisement, is met by border guards in Lviv area of ATO [Anti Terrorist Operation] A;so fond at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da54oztCDM0#t=12

Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine have sustained dramatic setbacks after top military chiefs quit and Kiev's forces pummeled their strongholds, cutting off a key rebel-held city from the Russian border. Kiev's advance came as the Russian "humanitarian" convoy parked up close to the frontier, with doubts still swirling over what the trucks contained and whether they would be allowed to cross. According to reports in two British newspapers, a smaller group of Russian vehicles, including armored cars, did cross the border into Ukraine late Thursday. The Daily Telegraph "witnessed a column of vehicles including both armoured personal carriers and soft-skinned...

President Barack Obama has announced that the United States launched air strikes on the terrorist organization ISIS to assist Kurdistan. It is likely you have not seen a headline that says, “US Strikes help Kurds retake towns.” That is because it never happened. The air support came from Russian and Iranian planes. The only problem is that’s not entirely true. My contacts in Kurdistan are now saying that many of these attacks are being launched by the Iraqi air force. The only problem is that the US government has not sold airplanes to Iraq, but Russia has armed them with...

You could almost hear the groans from Democrat Jason Carter’s camp last week when his grandfather, former President Jimmy Carter, co-authored an op-ed arguing that Hamas should be recognized as a legitimate political actor. Gov. Nathan Deal has since tried to tie his November opponent to his grandpa’s views of Hamas, the militant faction which the U.S. considers a terrorist group. Others, including some Democratic supporters, have questioned why Carter didn’t come out strongly against his grandfather’s position. Carter’s strategists don’t want the campaign to answer for his grandfather every time he says something controversial. They also recognize Deal and...

On July 19, 2014, the P5+1 (the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, and China, coordinated by EU High Representative Catherine Ashton) and Iran affirmed that they will continue to implement the commitments described in the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) and the U.S. government has extended through November 24, 2014, the sanctions relief provided for in the JPOA. This extended relief comes into effect on July 21, 2014. The following documents are key components of the implementation of the JPOA as extended. Guidance Relating to the Provision Of Certain Temporary Sanctions Relief in Order to Implement the Joint...

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki says she has become a Twitter meme in Russian circles because she is a woman, claiming they "have a bit of a tendency to focus on the outfits I’m wearing and the colors I’m wearing." Psaki accused Russian outlets like Russia Today of sexism and spreading false rumors that she was fired from the State Department because she has not been at the podium lately. (Psaki's deputy Marie Harf conducted the State Department daily press briefing all last week.) Russia Today responded, saying the shots fired at Psaki on Twitter from Russians are for the...

Allies: With all the disconcerting things going on in the Mideast, you could be forgiven for missing an event critically important to America's long-term interests: Recep Erdogan's election as president of Turkey. Erdogan's 52% victory over the weekend in a stage-managed election, making him the nation's first directly elected president, heralds a new era of conflict in the Mideast and perhaps the end of NATO as we know it. Turkey has for decades been a key ally to the U.S. and NATO in the Mideast, an anchor in the Cold War against the USSR and friendly toward Israel as the...

We must go back into Iraq. Then when we leave, we must not leave an Iraq. In the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion, there were two strategic errors. The first was when the Americans took down the US flag in Baghdad. In some American stores the sign says: "If you break it, you own it." We broke Iraq, but then we refused to own it – we refused to raise our flag and say: "It's our responsibility now if your power doesn't work or someone tries to rob you." The second great error is the one that's really coming...

Reuters) - Ukrainian rebels are receiving new armoured vehicles and fighters trained in Russia, with which they plan to launch a major counter-offensive against government forces, a separatist leader said in a video released on Saturday. The four-month conflict in eastern Ukraine has reached a critical phase, with Kiev and Western governments watching nervously to see if Russia will intervene in support of the increasingly besieged rebels - an intention Moscow denies. Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, said the rebels were in the process of receiving some 150 armoured vehicles, including 30 tanks, and 1,200...

The White House announced Friday that President Barack Obama will jet out to the small Eastern European country of Estonia in early September, before attending a NATO meeting in Wales. The trip is likely intended to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from grabbing parts of Estonia and its two small neighbors, all of whom contain populations of ethnic Russians. All three countries are member of NATO, and are too small to block a determined Russian invasion. “In light of recent developments in Ukraine, the United States has taken steps to reassure allies in Central and Eastern Europe, and this trip...

Slip of the tongue? Yesterday on CNN’s “The Situation Room” Hillary Clinton spoke about what she would do about licensing illegal immigrants when she is president again. Watch:

The United Nations Security Council took aim at Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria on Friday, blacklisting six people including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) spokesman and threatening sanctions against those who finance, recruit or supply weapons to the insurgents. The 15-member council unanimously adopted a resolution that aims to weaken ISIS and al Qaeda's Syrian wing Nusra Front, Reuters reported. ISIS has long been blacklisted by the Security Council, while Nusra Front was added earlier this year. Both groups are designated under the U.N. al Qaeda sanctions regime. EU ministers agreed Friday to back the arming...

The new rebel leader in east Ukraine's Donetsk region has said his forces include 1,200 fighters who underwent military training in Russia. Addressing a meeting, Alexander Zakharchenko said the fighters had trained "four months on the territory of the Russian Federation". The rebels, he said, had reserves of 150 combat vehicles, including tanks. An earlier mistranslation of his words suggested Mr Zakharchenko had said the vehicles were on their way from Russia. Russia has denied claims by Ukraine and Western reporters that military aid to the rebels has been crossing the border.[] Mr Zakharchenko, who became the prime minister of...

Hillary Clinton called President Barack Obama on Tuesday to “make sure he knows that nothing she said was an attempt to attack him” when she recently discussed her views on foreign policy in an interview with The Atlantic, according to a statement from a Clinton spokesman. The statement comes amid tension between the Clinton and Obama camps in the wake of the interview. It also comes as Obama and Clinton, his former secretary of state, are due to cross paths at a social gathering Wednesday night in Martha’s Vineyard. In the interview, Clinton dismissed the Obama administration’s self-described foreign policy...

The Middle East is in a downward spiral. More than 160,000 have died in Syria's civil war, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, aka ISIS, has captured key Iraqi cities and is marching on Baghdad, and the security investments made by the U.S. over the past decade—like them or not—are being frittered away. It is still possible to reverse the recent gains of ISIS, an outgrowth of what was once al Qaeda in Iraq. The group's fighters number only in the thousands, and while well-armed, they lack the accoutrements of a serious military. But only the United States can...

“I think that a new, repugnant form of fascism is emerging with notable strength…The Nazi genocide of Jews outraged all the earth’s peoples. Why does this (Israeli) government believe that the world will be insensitive to the macabre genocide which today is being perpetuated against the Palestinian people?” (Fidel Castro, August, 5, 2014) “Who cares, what that senile ZOMBIE Castro says!” strikes me as a reasonable retort from many readers. “Unfortunately,” I’m forced to answer. “Many otherwise reasonable care very much what Fidel Castro says.” Take Israeli Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu: “The remarks attributed to Castro demonstrate his deep understanding...

If Russia and Ukraine slide into outright war, the United States and allies will face tough choices on how to support a friendly state they have no intention of making a full NATO member. If Moscow ever took any such action against a NATO member, that would inevitably trigger the alliance's Chapter 5 mutual defense clause, essentially committing it to war. Ukraine, however, is not a member and Western officials say is unlikely to become one any time soon.

Confidence in Germany is crumbling. The ZEW investor confidence survey index plunged to 44.3 in August from 61.8 a month ago. This was much worse than the 54.0 expected by economists. To make things worse, the expectations index crashed to 8.6 from 27.1. This was the lowest reading since December 2012. Economists were expecting 17.0. "In one line: Grim, as slump in investor sentiment deepens," said Pantheon Economics' Claus Vistesen. "Given the recent sharp drawdown in equities, a drop in sentiment was expected, but the decline was larger than anticipated, reinforcing downside risk to the economy." Some of this deterioration...

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Far from being depleted by its recent sweep into Iraq, the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is pressing deeper into Syria, regaining territory it had lost to the mainstream Syrian insurgents just as the Syrian Army has come within five miles of encircling the insurgent-held section of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. The dual advance is on the verge of dealing a potentially fatal blow to the mainstream insurgents, leaving them besieged in the city while ISIS, a group deemed too extreme even by Al Qaeda, faces the Syrian government across a crucial front line at...

Through his State Department ventriloquist dummy, Barack Obama is denying that there is any truth to a Wall Street Journal article that Obama put a halt to ammunition shipments to Israel. The problem for Obama is that his credibility has long been shot so nothing he or any of his underlings asserts can be believed.At some point, credibility matters and the lack of it can reach a point so low that the default position of those you’re trying to convince is justifiably that you’re lying.Advantage, Netanyahu. White House and State Department officials who were leading U.S. efforts to rein in...