Territorial Disputes

An English Soccer Team’s Existential Crisis: Is It Really in Wales?

Chas Sumner has heard the quiz question in all its forms. There was the one that asked: “Which club has an international border running along the halfway line of its stadium?” Or this one: “Which soccer team gets changed in one country but plays in another?” Or: “Where can you take a corner in England, […]

The Island Paradise Near the Front Line of Tensions Over Taiwan

ISHIGAKI, Japan — For decades, Testuhiro Kinjo’s biggest worry was defending his mango trees against typhoons and marauding insects. That was before the Japanese government decided to deploy missile launchers near his property on Ishigaki, a small, subtropical island just 200 miles from Taiwan. Over the past year, as China has carried out ever more […]

Putin and Xi Hold Video Summit

MOSCOW — President Biden may have his alliance of democracies, but as a video summit on Wednesday underscored, Russia and China still have each other. President Xi Jinping of China, facing a diplomatic boycott of this winter’s Beijing Olympics from Mr. Biden and others, secured a public pledge from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia […]

How Far Would Biden Go to Defend Ukraine Against Russia?

Russia has not explicitly threatened to invade Ukraine, but it has complained of alleged provocations from the Ukrainian side of their shared border. Mr. Putin has supported a pro-Russian separatist insurgency in the former Soviet republic’s east since 2014, when a popular revolution ousted Ukraine’s Putin-backed president. Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula soon afterward. In […]

Melee Erupts Between Migrants in Belarus and Polish Border Forces

BRUZGI, Belarus — He has spent 28 nights, each colder than the one before, choking on campfire smoke and despair on Europe’s doorstep. He made it across the razor wire into Poland three times, only to be grabbed in the forest and forced back into Belarus. His visa for Belarus expired 12 days ago, leaving […]

How a Dispute Over Groceries Led to Artillery Strikes in Ukraine

HRANITNE, Ukraine — Artillery shells fired by Russian-backed separatists shrieked into this small town deep in the flatlands of eastern Ukraine, shearing branches from trees, scooping out craters, blowing up six houses and killing one Ukrainian soldier. It was an all-too-common response to the smallest of provocations — a dispute over grocery shopping for a […]

Biden and Xi to meet amid economic and military tensions.

President Biden and President Xi Jinping of China will meet for more than three hours in a virtual summit on Monday evening as the United States seeks to engage in what the administration calls “intense competition” with China while preventing serious conflict. Since becoming president, Mr. Biden has spoken twice with Mr. Xi, but they […]