Dec. 19 (UPI) --Russia should have launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a year-end news conference Thursday. Putin made the comments while also fielding calls from audience members and reporters ...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed the Ukraine war with his Swiss counterpart Ignazio Cassis in a phone call on Wednesday, his ministry said on Thursday.

President Vladimir Putin insisted Russia was making advances “along the entire frontline” of Ukraine, but declined to say when Moscow would retake the southern Kursk region, as he began his year-end news conference.

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he had pulled Russia back from the edge of the abyss after the chaos which accompanied the fall of the Soviet Union, and had built the country into a sovereign power able to stand up for itself.

Russian President Vladimir Putin does not see the ousting of Syria's Bashar al-Assad as a defeat for his country's military, which has been stationed there since 2015. "They want to pass off the events in Syria as a defeat for Russia.

Far from their homes in one of the world’s most isolated and secretive states, about 11,000 North Korean soldiers find themselves at the center of Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II.

At least 100 North Korean soldiers have been killed in fighting in the Ukraine war since entering combat on the Russian side earlier this month, a South Korean MP has said. Lee Sung-kwon, speaking to reporters after parliament was briefed by the country's National Intelligence Service,