DONETSK REGION — For weeks, Ukrainian military intelligence tracked the pattern of discreet arrivals at an unfinished luxury residential complex in the heart of Russian-occupied Donetsk. Staff sedans with tinted...
TOKYO — For decades, defense strategists in Washington and European capitals operated under an ironclad assumption about Japan: bound by the pacifist constraints of its post-World War II constitution, Tokyo...
MOSCOW — Along the sweeping outer arcs of the Moscow Ring Road, the asphalt has congealed into an unmoving graveyard of trucks, sedans, and stalled delivery vans. Past midnight, under...
On a warm summer evening just over a mile from the Kremlin’s fortified red-brick ramparts, inside the opulent dining room of Balzi Rossi—a chandelier-lit Italian restaurant nestled in the base...
WASHINGTON — When a discreetly chartered government jet touched down on a Moscow runway for an unannounced diplomatic encounter, it set into motion one of the most fraught, closely scrutinized,...
KYIV, Ukraine — For months, Russian commanders believed the grinding battle for northern Donetsk was tilting steadily in their favor. Having committed significant reserves to a slow, attritional push around...
CONSTANȚA, Romania — The morning shift on the Neptun Alpha offshore drilling platform was barely an hour old when the lookout aboard an approaching commercial support vessel spotted a low-slung,...
In the dense pine forests and rolling riverbanks of northern Donetsk, Russian commanders believed Ukrainian forces were on the verge of retreat. Instead, Kyiv sprung a meticulously prepared, months-long trap...
ASTRAKHAN, Russia — In the predawn chill where the muddy waters of the Volga River spill into the landlocked Caspian Sea, the Kremlin long believed it had established an untouchable...
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — For more than three years, the imperial boulevards of St. Petersburg and the gleaming commercial districts of Moscow functioned inside a carefully curated bubble of normalcy....