Flashpoints

The steps recommended by the group include opening field hospitals in eastern Poland, providing Ukraine with armored ambulances and taking some of the sick and wounded to a U.S. military hospital in Germany.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces not to storm the last remaining Ukrainian stronghold in the besieged city of Mariupol but to block it “so that not even a fly comes through.”

China, like Russia, has been ambitiously reforming its Soviet-style military and experts say leader Xi Jinping will be carefully parsing Russia’s failures in Ukraine.

The talks broke a communications impasse that American officials saw as increasingly dangerous.

Russia intensified assaults along a front hundreds of miles long in what officials on both sides described as a new phase of the war.

So far, only a small number of Syrian fighters appear to have arrived in Russia for military training ahead of deployment on the front lines.

It is now believed the April 7 attack was carried out by the “deliberate placement of explosive charges” by one or more individuals at an ammunition holding area and shower facility on the base.

China said its military staged exercises Friday to reinforce its threat to use force to bring Taiwan under its control, as U.S. lawmakers visited the island.