Interviews

The closure of Sanaa International Airport in Yemen is an unfortunate element of the multilateral war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, which has resulted in civilians suffering, according to the director of the Yemeni Democracy Monitoring Center, Abdel Wahab Al Sharfi.

The Libyan government’s restriction on foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating off the coast of the country can be extremely dangerous and it can put thousands of lives at risk, Stefano Argenziano, manager of Migration Operations for Médecins Sans Frontières told Sputnik.

A speaker of the Syrian Parliament, Najdat Anzour, in an interview with Sputnik said that the victory in the war on terrorism is very close, as the militants are suffering huge losses. The country is reforming its political system as it prepares for the return of peace.

About 30,000 Afghans are fighting foreign wars in Iraq and Syria according to former Afghani Prime Minister and leader of the Islamic Party, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Bumblebees are facing extinction from insecticides. This is what a team of UK researchers have discovered. The study was posted on the Nature.com website this week. Radio Sputnik discussed this issue with Mark Brown, Professor in Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway University of London.

For several months now, the US has been unable to decide on a new strategy for Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the situation in the country is getting worse. Political analyst, Abdul Kader Mesbah told Sputnik Dari in an interview that no one will pay attention to the situation in Afghanistan until terrorists begin to threaten the US or the world community.

Baghdad and Riyadh are reportedly negotiating a new alliance that would give the latter a leading role in rebuilding war-torn Iraq. The pact also aims to return Iraq ‘to the Arab fold’ and bolster its credentials across the region.

US forces have set up a military base in the vicinity of the besieged city of Tal Afar, located west of Mosul in an effort to join the Iraqi forces to liberate the city from Daesh. Sputnik Turkey spoke with a representative of the Turkmen militia in Iraq, deputy of the Iraqi Kurdistan regional parliament about this development.

The United States formally launched a probe into China's trade practices to find out whether the country's actions may harm American commerce, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Friday.

The controversy over President Donald Trump’s “Russian contacts” continues in the United States. Special counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller convened a grand jury to look into the meeting of the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya.

The Daesh terrorist organization remains a major global threat despite recent military blows, according to a new report by a panel of experts for the UN Security Council (UNSC). Sputnik discussed this issue with terrorism expert Dr. Clarke Jones in an interview.

The armed conflict in Yemen continues against the background of the outbreak of a cholera epidemic. In the West, the conflict is presented as a hybrid war between Iranian-backed Houthis and US-backed Saudis.

A doctor from Siberia, Alexander Volchek, does not carry a pass to work or any other access cards because all of them are implanted under his skin. Volchek is not the first person to have decided to become somewhat cyborg: the so-called biohackers community in Russia has more than 50 people.

While Washington expects China to pressure North Korea in order to make it stop conducting missile tests, the influence Beijing has on the situation is overestimated, an assistant director of the US-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies told Radio Sputnik.

Mustafa Balli a media relations representative of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), spoke to Sputnik Turkey in an interview about the latest developments in Raqqa.

The former head of the political branch of the Yemeni Hizb al-Haqq (Party of Truth), Ahmed Ali al-Bahri, told Sputnik in an interview that since the outbreak of war in Yemen, the United States has supported the coalition led by Saudi Arabia with military supplies and intelligence.

The US and Vietnam have agreed on a visit by a US aircraft carrier to the country next year. It will be the first such visit since the Vietnam War ended in 1975. Radio Sputnik spoke with an analyst, Dr. Collin Koh Swee Lean, in an interview about this development.

While diplomatic battles were raging in Manila over the final statements of the foreign ministers in light of the ASEAN meetings, Vietnamese Defense Minister Ngo Xuan Lịch was meeting with his US counterpart, James Mattis, in Washington. Sputnik China spoke to an expert from the Center for Strategic Research, Anton Tsvetov, in an interview.

South Asia and China need to adopt a legally binding code of conduct in the South China Sea, according to the foreign ministers of Australia, Japan and the United States in a statement following the recent ASEAN meetings held in Manila. Sputnik spoke with an expert, Carl Thayer, about this issue.

The Pentagon has spent almost half a billion dollars for the training of Afghan intelligence officers under a special program. However, no tangible results have been achieved, according to a report of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).