The world is doing little as the killing of civilians in Aleppo continues. Bernard-Henri Lévy argues that it is now time for the European Union to act

Donor nations have pledged to give billions of dollars in aid to Syrians as world leaders gathered for a conference to tackle the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with Turkey reporting a new exodus of tens of thousands fleeing air strikes.

Denmark’s parliament passed measures aimed at deterring refugees from seeking asylum, including confiscating valuables to pay for their stay, despite protests from international human rights organisations.

US secretary of state John Kerry, in a visit to Moscow yesterday, sought to make progress in narrowing differences with Russian leader Vladimir Putin over how to end the conflict in Syria.

In a move raising the potential threat of a Russia-NATO conflict, Russia says it will deploy long-range air defence missiles to its base in Syria and destroy any target that may threaten its warplanes after the downing of its military jet by Turkey.

Russia has called on Washington to restart direct military-to-military co-operation to avert “unintended incidents” near Syria, at a time when US officials say Moscow is building up forces to protect president Bashar al-Assad’s government.

While the desperate flight of Syrians from their country’s war was dominating news bulletins, yet another diplomatic push to end the four-year-old conflict was quietly running into the sand.

It began with the creation of the catch-all concept (a legal freak) of a migrant’, which obscures the difference, central to the law, between economic and political migration, between people escaping poverty and people driven from their homes by war.

Ceasefire under threat as Independence Day imminent

US secretary of state John Kerry yesterday expressed “gave concern” to his Russian counterpart about a sharp rise in separatist attacks in eastern Ukraine and urged an immediate ceasefire, the State Department said.

Nato’s chief said that Russia had built up forces on the border with Ukraine and sent more military hardware into eastern Ukraine, enabling pro-Russia separatists to launch attacks with little warning if they chose.

The EU has charged Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom energy giant of abusing its dominant position in central and eastern EU nations in an anti-competitive case that will further test tense relations between Brussels and Moscow.

Russian president Vladimir Putin and Greek PM Alexis Tsipras said they want to restore ties between their countries amid signs of a schism among some EU states on whether to maintain sanctions against Russia over the conflict in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s government has approved a list of debt that should be restructured under an IMF programme to save the nation $15.3bn (€13.94bn), including $3bn in Eurobonds sold to Russia.

The foreign ministers of Iran and six world powers met in a final push for a preliminary nuclear accord before their deadline today as Tehran showed signs of backing away from previous compromise offers.

Thirteen people were killed when a bus in Ukraine was hit by a rocket earlier this month, but it barely registered as news outside a country still fighting on all sides, writes Lucian Kim

Everyone who marched in Paris or elsewhere did so for their own

The Ukrainian parliament has renounced Ukraine’s “non-aligned” status with the aim of eventually joining NATO, angering Moscow which views the Western alliance’s eastward expansion as a threat to its own security.

Declaring the world at a crossroads between war and peace, President Barack Obama vowed at the UN to lead a coalition to dismantle an Islamic State "network of death" that has wreaked havoc in the Middle East and drawn the US back into military action.

The news that the Ukrainian military is battling rebel armoured vehicles that crossed from Russia and headed towards Mariupol does not auger well for today’s meeting between Russian and Ukrainian presidents in Minsk. It suggests that Russia is determined to copper-fasten its authority in the region. The Ukraine’s response, and that of its allies, will shape events, but it seems difficult to predict a peaceful outcome.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is in the "last chance saloon" over the Ukraine crisis, but appears to be doing little to get out of it.

The US said yesterday it was prepared to impose further targeted sanctions on Russia over its actions in Ukraine and that European leaders had agreed to coordinate on steps to make Moscow pay.

Russia has demanded more autonomy for Ukraine’s regions as the pressured nation ordered its troops out of Crimea.

US secretary of state John Kerry warned Russia that Washington and Europe were preparing a tough response to a breakaway vote in Ukraine’s Crimea, depending on how Moscow reacts.

France says European sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis could come as early as this week.

Russia vowed yesterday to unveil its own solution to the Ukrainian crisis that would run counter to US efforts and would appear to leave room for Crimea to switch over to Kremlin rule.

Syrian government and opposition delegates said talks to end their country’s civil war have reached an impasse, with the United States and Russia backing the rival camps and trading accusations over the deadlock.

Ukraine’s opposition called for international mediation and appealed for Western financial aid for the first time in their protests against the president Viktor Yanukovych yesterday.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said important gaps needed to be bridged in high-stakes talks with Iran on curbing its nuclear programme and he began talks with Tehran’s foreign minister to try to clinch an interim deal.

US security leaker Edward Snowden is set to start a new job at a major Russian website, three months after the fugitive was given asylum in Russia, his lawyer said yesterday.

Syria’s government hailed as a “victory” a Russian-brokered deal that has averted US strikes, while President Barack Obama defended a chemical weapons pact that the rebels fear has bolstered their enemy in the civil war.

President Barack Obama has welcomed an agreement to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile as an “important, concrete step” toward the ultimate goal of eliminating them but warned that the US remains prepared to act if the attempt at a diplomatic solution fails.

David Cameron has firmly rejected pressure to go back to the British Parliament in a fresh attempt to seek MPs’ approval for involvement in military action in Syria, following the Prime Minister’s dramatic defeat last Thursday.

Britain's National Security Council has agreed unanimously that the world “should not stand by” after the “unacceptable” use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said.

Britain’s armed forces are drawing up contingency plans for military action in response to the chemical weapons attack in Syria, Downing Street said today.

Snipers have fired on the UN convoy carrying a team investigating the use of chemical weapons in Syria, but failed to deter them from their mission today.

Countries calling for military action against Syria have no proof the government is behind the alleged chemical weapons attack, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.