In October 2018, NATO countries will conduct large-scale military exercises at Russian borders involving 45,000 personnel, RIA Novosti reports, citing General Robert Neller, the 37th Commandant of the US Marine Corps.

Neller did not specify exactly where the exercises would be conducted but he expressed confidence that Russia would respond to them. "There may be 45,000 NATO troops and dozens of ships and aircraft that will conduct exercises off the coast of Norway against the simulated threat." …

President Petro Poroshenko intends to visit Germany before April and discuss with German authorities the issue of the Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, as he stated in an interview with Ukrainian TV channels.

"In the coming days, within 2-3 weeks, I'm going to visit Germany ... This topic (Nord Stream-2) will certainly be on the agenda of our talks," he said, answering a question about Germany's reluctance to abandon the project.

Poroshenko stressed that many European countries are …

Commanders from the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC) have spoken to the media under conditions of anonymity and provided information on the PMC’s activity in Syria.

The PMC’s Syrian campaign began in 2015. The Wagner Group carries out military assignments, and numbers roughly 2,000 mercenaries, the unnamed commanders claim. The PMC is seconded by the Karpaty detachment, which is made up of 300 cossacks with Ukrainian citizenship. One commander claimed that there may be as many as 8,000 …

In an interview with Ukrainian television channels on Wednesday, March 7, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that he is convinced that the Russian company Gazprom will fully pay Naftogaz $2.56 billion following the results of two arbitration disputes in the Stockholm Arbitration Court.  

"I have no doubt that Ukraine will get everything to a penny. I declare that this issue is absolutely not about money. This issue has geopolitical significance ... The position of the Russian Federation, …

US Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker stated that "it's time to think about tougher sanctions over the Crimea." Ukrinform reports on March 7 that he made the statement during his speech at the Warsaw office of the German Marshall Fund.

"It is important that the US, EU, Ukraine and other countries do not recognize Russia's annexation of the Crimea. I believe it's time to think about how we can make our position tougher, including consequences for trips [of politicians], trade and …

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow was consciously led to annex Crimea.

“Sometimes it seems to me - and I think that there are certain grounds for this - that someone consciously led us to such a line, and once there, we had to act the way we acted. Not many expected that we would act so quickly, so resolutely, if not boldly,” said Putin in TV host Vladimir Soloviev’s film “World Order 2018.” The film is on Soloviev’s Vkontakte page.

According to Putin, he did not doubt that …

The European Parliament will not send observers to the presidential elections in Russia on March 18, nor will they send them to Azerbaijan on April 11.

This was announced on Wednesday by the co-chairs of the European Parliament’s group on democracy support and election coordination David McAllister and Linda McAvan, Ukrinform reports.

“The European Parliament will not observe these electoral processes and, consequently, will also not comment on these processes and the results which will be …

On Wednesday, March 7, the USS Oak Hill LSD 51 landing ship entered Black Sea waters. A photograph of the vessel’s passage through the Bosphorus Strait was published by the Istanbul information portals, Interfax reports.

“A large American landing ship, with divisions of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit with roughly 500 marines on board, is currently moving north towards the coast of Romania,” the report states.

The command of the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet said that the ship is going to take …