Russia's air strikes in Syria are in part designed to extract concessions from the West over Ukraine by making Moscow a key player in any attempts by world powers to hammer out a post-conflict settlement in Damascus, some Western officials believe. While the Syrian capital lies...

Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria to join a major ground offensive in support of  Bashar al-Assad's government, Lebanese sources said on Thursday, a further sign of the rapid internationalization of a civil war in which every major country in the region has a...

Russia launched air strikes in Syria on Wednesday in its biggest Middle East intervention in decades, plunging the four-year-old civil war into a volatile new phase as President Vladimir Putin moved forcefully to stake out influence in the unstable region. Moscow's assertion...

Russia said it launched air strikes against Islamic State in Syria on Wednesday after President Vladimir Putin secured his parliament's unanimous backing to intervene to prop up the Kremlin's closest Middle East ally. Moscow gave Washington just an hour's notice of the strikes,...