The North Korean soldiers fighting for Moscow in Russia’s Kursk region are assigned their own patches of land to assault. Unlike their Russian counterparts, they advance with almost no armored vehicles in support. When they attack, they do not pause to regroup or retreat, as the Russians often do when they start taking heavy losses, […]

After they win elections and move into the White House, plenty of presidents at some point eventually break a campaign promise. Donald J. Trump will not even wait that long. He will break an important campaign promise the moment he takes the oath of office. While stumping for a return to power in the fall, […]

Could this be the year, as President-elect Donald J. Trump has promised, when Russia’s war against Ukraine is brought to an end? The possibility of peace brings “tears to my eyes,” said Valeria, 30, an English teacher from eastern Ukraine. As Mr. Trump prepares to return to the White House on Monday, he is promising […]

Putting aside that argument, there are certainly some diplomatic opportunities Mr. Trump can seize, though history and ominous recent warnings suggest that he may soften up his adversaries and his allies with threats of military action if he doesn’t get what he wants. (See: Iran, Greenland, Panama.) Here is a scorecard to keep handy in […]

For his first three years as the head of the C.I.A., William J. Burns was relentlessly focused on tripling the agency’s resources devoted to understanding China, and on countering Russia and its mysterious partnerships with Iran and North Korea. But in the last 16 months of his tenure, the diplomat-turned-spy was plunged back into his […]

Making his final trip as America’s top diplomat last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken arrived in Paris, his former hometown, to a hero’s welcome. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, proclaimed Mr. Blinken “an eminent servant of peace” at a ceremony at the Élysée Palace before awarding him the country’s highest tribute, the Legion of […]

A Russian court on Friday sentenced three lawyers for the late opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny to as much as five and a half years in prison for passing on correspondence from him to his allies, a clear reminder of how the Kremlin is still pursuing his associates even after his death. The three lawyers […]

President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran arrived in Moscow on Friday for high-profile talks with Vladimir V. Putin, his Russian counterpart, solidifying an alliance between two countries driven by a mutual desire to challenge the West. Iran and Russia have been subjected to a raft of sanctions by the West, and trade and finance are at […]

It was a tense conversation between two authoritarian leaders accustomed to getting their way. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was offering explanations for the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash that had killed 38 people days earlier. Perhaps it was a flock of birds, Mr. Putin said, or an exploding gas canister. Maybe a Ukrainian drone. […]

Poland’s prime minister appeared on Wednesday to confirm the conclusions of western intelligence officials who had warned of a Russian plot to blow up cargo aircraft over western countries. “I can only confirm that Russia planned acts of air terror, not just against Poland but against airlines across the globe,” the prime minister, Donald Tusk, […]