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 […]

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 […]

Loud explosions were heard over the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, early Saturday, as the authorities warned of incoming ballistic missiles. An air-raid alert had just ended when booms were heard throughout the city at 5:50 a.m. local time. Seconds later, air-raid sirens began to wail. The country’s air-defense systems were working, the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, […]

Loud explosions were heard over the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, early Saturday, as the authorities warned of incoming ballistic missiles. An air-raid alert had just ended when booms were heard throughout the city at 5:50 a.m. local time. Seconds later, air-raid sirens began to wail. The country’s air-defense systems were working, the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, […]

Davos is coming just in time for the inauguration of Donald J. Trump 2.0, and Europe is anxious. Mr. Trump is like an asteroid heading for Earth, argues Hubert Védrine, a former French foreign minister, and debates about the impact will dominate the cozy, internationalist bubble that gathers each year in the pricey snow of […]

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 […]

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Kyiv on Thursday, a show of solidarity four days before the inauguration of Donald J. Trump. The trip to Ukraine, Mr. Starmer’s first since he became prime minister over the summer, comes amid a flurry of diplomacy between Kyiv and its […]