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President Obama on Thursday sidestepped the question of whether Russia has mounted an invasion of Ukraine, describing the movement of troops and equipment across the border as an "incursion" and "continuation of what's been taking place" in the region. Obama accused Russia of "deliberately and repeatedly" violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and vowed "more costs and consequences" from the United States and its allies. "The separatists are trained by Russia, they are armed by Russia, they are funded by Russia," Obama said. "Russia has deliberately and repeatedly violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and the...

ussia invaded Ukraine months ago, but President Vladimir Putin’s forces escalated the fighting this week. NATO announced that over 1,000 Russian soldiers are operating in the country’s Eastern region, while there are reports that regular Russian forces are barreling along the Sea of Azov toward the port city of Mariupol. Ongoing fighting between Russian and Ukrainian soldiers has left scores of Russians dead and wounded, with military hospitals near the border overflowing with injured troops and 100 Russian soldiers possibly killed in a single battle last week. So, with dead and wounded Russian soldiers now being trucked back to the...

NATO released a series of satellite images: "Russian combat soldiers, equipped with heavy weaponry ... operating inside Ukraine’s sovereign territory." NATO website, the photos "confirmed what NATO and its Allies had been seeing for weeks from other sources." This is a direct contradiction of statements made by Kremlin officials and a pro-Russian separatist leader all of the Russian troops who had entered the country were on "their vacations" and assisting the separatists on a volunteer basis. Tak said indicated "substantial numbers of Russian combat troops inside Ukraine" as well as "large quantities of advanced weapons, including air defense systems, artillery,...

The apparent presence of Russian troops in Eastern Ukraine amounts to an “active invasion,” Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said, calling Russia’s advance an “absolutely reckless” and “shamelessly dishonest” provocation leading up to a NATO summit next week. .... “This is absolutely unacceptable, irresponsible and absolutely reckless. It is also deeply and shamelessly dishonest. While Russian President Putin talked about ceasefires with [Ukraine] President [Petro] Poroshenko in Minsk, his military was busy fighting on Ukrainian soil,” Mr. Baird told reporters Thursday in a conference call from Croatia. “Russia’s credibility was very limited after the dishonesty and deception over Crimea....

In August 1939 -- 75 years ago this week -- Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin signed the Hitler-Stalin Pact. In the wake of the Russo-German alliance, newspaper wits coined the term "ComunNazi." Communist-Nazi. Yes, "red" and "brown" entwined as the dictatorships they are. The two dictators' legions of liars hailed the deal as a peace treaty. Peace? Eastern Europeans in the dictators' gun sights scorned the falsehood. "Peace in our time, " Neville Chamberlain had proclaimed after the wretched Munich deal of 1938, which gave Hitler permission to annex slices of Czechoslovakia. Of course, when given a slice, Hitler annexed...

Whatever you do, don’t call it an invasion. U.S. officials are refusing to call Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine this week an invasion, and the issue is not on the agenda for Thursday’s National Security Council meeting. “Today the president is meeting with his National Security Council to discuss the situation in Iraq and Syria, our ongoing efforts to support the Iraqi government, and our efforts to counter the threat posed by ISIL,” a White House official said on Thursday when asked if the situation in Ukraine would also be a part of the meeting. “You should not expect that...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - More than 100 Russian soldiers were killed in eastern Ukraine in a battle this month while helping pro-Russian separatists fight Ukrainian troops, two members of the Russian presidential human rights council said on Thursday, citing accounts of eye-witness and relatives of the dead. Ella Polyakova and Sergei Krivenko, both members of the council, said around 300 people were also injured in the violence on Aug. 13 near the town of Snizhnye in Donetsk Province, when a column of trucks full of ammunition they were driving was hit by a sustained volley of Grad missiles. "A column of...

Russia's defence ministry on Thursday strongly denied reports that Russian military units were operating in Ukraine.

Not too long ago, top officials within the Russian government said Western sanctions were not going to hurt. A couple of months later, reality has settled in. Russia’s Economic Development Minister, Alexei Ulyukayev, said the economy had many obstacles and entered a negative growth cycle. In an op-ed published in the Vedomosti newspaper Monday, Ulyukayev wrote, “ It could be said that we have entered a negative stage of the economic cycle. Lack of demand is a significant obstacle on the way to restoring steady growth.” Sanctions are not helping matters.

Reports that Russian troops are intervening directly in the fighting in south-east Ukraine have started to appear in Russian media, despite repeated denials from the Kremlin. Newspapers and websites are quoting mainly Ukrainian and Western media reports about a Russian invasion, but some have also started to ask whether Moscow is now "fighting a war". Many Russian social media users, however, say they have no doubt that Ukraine has been "attacked". They echo sentiments in the Ukrainian twitter-sphere where #russiainvadesukraine, #StopPutin, and #UkraineUnderAttack have become the top trending hashtags.

Ukraine Today: A militant leader in Ukraine's eastern city of Donetsk has admitted that Russian soldiers are fighting among his forces in the insurgency. Alexander Zakharchenko, the prime minister of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic, told Russian media that between 3,000 and 4,000 Russian soldiers on leave from their posts have been fighting in the insurgency.

Tanks, artillery and infantry have crossed from Russia into an unbreached part of eastern Ukraine in recent days, attacking Ukrainian forces and causing panic and wholesale retreat not only in this small border town but a wide swath of territory, in what Ukrainian and Western military officials are calling a stealth invasion. The attacks outside this city and in an area to the north essentially have opened a new, third front in the war in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists, along with the fighting outside the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.

KIEV, Ukraine — Russian forces in two armored columns captured a key southeastern coastal town near the Russian border Thursday after Ukrainian forces retreated in the face of superior firepower, a Ukrainian military spokesman said. The two Russian columns, including tanks and armored fighting vehicles, entered the town of Novoazovsk on the Sea of Azov after a battle in which Ukrainian army positions came under fire from Grad rockets launched from Russian territory, according to the spokesman, Col. Andriy Lysenko. “Our border servicemen and guardsmen retreated as they did not have heavy equipment,” Lysenko said in a statement. Ukrainian authorities...

Addressing an international forum in Warsaw, ex-Pres Leonid Kravchuk said time will soon come when Crimean residents will ask to readmit them back into Ukraine, Ukrinform reports July 11. “Three million Crimeans cannot tolerate their present miserable life,” he said.

Key Points Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says Russia has sent troops to eastern Ukraine.Mr Poroshenko cancelled a trip to Turkey and called urgent meetings of officials to consider Ukraine's response.The accusation came as pro-Russian rebels seized control of Novoazovsk in the south-east, threatening to take the port of Mariupol next.Alexander Zakharchenko, a pro-Russian rebel leader in eastern Ukraine, said 3-4,000 Russian citizens were fighting with the rebels.The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is holding urgent talks on the crisis.All times BST (GMT + 1 hour).

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has cancelled a visit to Turkey, citing "Russian troop deployments" in the east of the country. Mr Poroshenko said his place was in Kiev in view of a sharp deterioration in the situation in Donetsk region. His announcement came as pro-Russian rebels captured the seaside town of Novoazovsk and threatened to take the strategic port city of Mariupol. The rebel successes constitute the opening of a new front in the conflict. Mr Poroshenko said he was calling a meeting of the Ukrainian security council. He added that Ukraine would initiate an emergency session of the United...

Russia has consistently denied sending tanks into Ukraine, arguing that any vehicles used by separatist forces there must have been captured from the Ukrainian army itself. But now experts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London have told the BBC that they have identified a Russian tank in a separatist column in eastern Ukraine that they say could only have come from across the border in Russia.

Russia will offer Ukraine and EU amendments to their agreement on association, the Vedomosti newspaper writes on Thursday with reference to the Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation Andrey Belousov and the head of the Ministry of Economic Development Alexey Ulyukaev. The agreement of Ukraine and EU will be ratified in the fall, it provides free trade zone creation. Ukraine should nullify the majority of import duties for goods of EU, to accept the European phytosanitary norms and manufacturing regulations. According to Putin, it means that the Ukrainian market will actually be closed for the Russian goods, and...

A group of Russian paratroopers captured by Ukrainian forces gave a news conference on Wednesday in which they maintained their innocence.

A new English-language Al Qaeda magazine features a how-to article on making car bombs and suggests terror targets in the United States, including casinos in Las Vegas, oil tankers and military colleges, and implies that an attack is imminent. The online publication, called “Palestine-Betrayal of the Guilty Conscience Al-Malahem” and put out by the media arm of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, calls for Muslims around the world to follow “the recipe” provided to set off car bombs in crowded venues. It includes a timeline of "selected jihadi operations" that the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI),...