Tetiana Frolova

Russia has dispatched a submarine to protect a sanctioned oil tanker from its “shadow fleet” as the vessel attempts to evade interception by the United States Coast Guard in the Atlantic Ocean—an unprecedented escalation in Washington’s global crackdown on illicit oil shipments, according to reporting by  The Wall Street Journal .

Western allies are preparing to move beyond political assurances and toward binding security guarantees for Ukraine, including the possible deployment of foreign troops and explicit US support if Russia attacks again, according to draft agreements set to be discussed at a high-level summit in Paris.

One of the US military’s most secretive surveillance aircraft—the stealthy RQ-170 Sentinel—appears to have been quietly deployed to support the high-risk operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, according to reporting by  The War Zone on January 3.