Germany's Angela Merkel said on Wednesday she hoped a new round of talks with Ukraine and Russia in Berlin could help implement an elusive ceasefire in eastern Ukraine but warned against expecting too much, given another upsurge in the violence.

• January 21, 2015

Ukraine on Tuesday accused pro-Russian separatists of taking advantage of a ceasefire deal signed last September to seize more territory in the east and said Kiev would demand its return in any future peace talks.

• January 20, 2015

China on Monday lodged a protest with Tokyo after Japanese media quoted Japan's foreign minister as saying that a disputed border region between China and India belonged to India, in the latest source of friction between the two Asian rivals.

• January 19, 2015

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu accused his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday of terrorism and said Israeli "provocations" such as the bombardment of Gaza were contributing to radicalization in the Muslim world.

• January 17, 2015

Russian is concerned that a rotation by Kiev of front-line forces in eastern Ukraine could undermine peace efforts, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday.

• January 16, 2015

Russia is working to develop within a few years the capability to threaten several neighbors at once on the scale of its present operation in Ukraine, a senior American general said.

• January 16, 2015

Lithuania is publishing a manual to advise its citizens on how to survive a war on its soil as concerns grow that Russia's intervention in Ukraine heralds increased assertiveness in its tiny Baltic neighbors.

• January 15, 2015

NATO's top military commander, General Philip Breedlove, said on Tuesday the defense alliance was looking at beefing up its exercises in the Baltic Sea region in response to a surge in Russian military maneuvers there late last year.

• January 13, 2015