Germany's foreign minister pressed for progress on a year-old peace plan for eastern Ukraine as he met Saturday with senior officials from Russia, Ukraine and France, saying he hopes that Moscow and Kiev realize that they don't have forever to implement the deal. Germany's Frank-Walter...

(Brookings- Shadi Hamid)- U.S. policy toward Syria is a fascinating, if depressing, case study. Many of my friends and colleagues who work on Syria—nearly all of them, in fact—have been baffled by President Obama’s approach to the Syrian conflict. The administration’s apparent...

Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill embraced and kissed on Friday in a historic meeting nearly 1,000 years after the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity split apart. "Finally," Francis said as he and Kirill entered through doors on opposite sides of a...

Bashar Assad has vowed to recapture the whole of Syria and keep "fighting terrorism" while also negotiating an end to the war, as international pressure mounts for a ceasefire. His defiant stance, in an exclusive interview with AFP released Friday, doused hopes of an imminent halt to...