Poland has asked Nato to station 10,000 troops on its territory as a visible demonstration of the alliance's resolve to defend all its members after Russia's seizure of Crimea.

Vladimir Putin will not stop trying to expand Russia until he has “conquered” Belarus, the Baltic states and Finland, one of his closest former advisers has said.

On the edge of a Kabul neighbourhood an election poster of presidential candidate Abdul Rasoul Sayyaf is damaged, partly scraped away by someone trying to remove it.

The Syrian conflict encroached threateningly on Nato's eastern frontiers yesterday when Turkey shot down an Assad regime fighter jet it said had crossed into its territory.

With two grandfathers gassed in the trenches of the Great War, and a father who battled Nazis at El Alamein, Rick Ottaway never consciously made a career choice.

The role of five New Zealanders involved in the famous Great Escape from a Nazi prison camp during World War II will be recognised in a commemoration in Poland today.

He is either the unluckiest man in the British Army, or the luckiest. Warrant Officer 1 Patrick Hyde has been blown up 17 times by insurgents.

Imagine you have a young child whose legs were amputated because the hospital didn't have the proper equipment to treat them.

Crimea has voted to embrace Kremlin rule, escalating an already grave international crisis to an incendiary level.

With a handful of houses, a couple of shops and some crumbling Kruschev-era flats, the village of Lyubovnets, near the northern side of Sevastopol's bay, is not much to look at.

A disturbing video put out by Save The Children has shown what Syria's civil war and refugee crisis would look like if it was set in the West.

Four World War II mines have been discovered on the seabed during a Navy exercise in Auckland's Hauraki Gulf this week.

A former fighter pilot whose bold march against the Russian soldiers occupying his airbase was one of the most stunning acts of resistance in this phoney war.

Unable to intervene militarily and with no direct economic levers to pull, the West believes it is successfully pressing Russia in the Ukraine crisis.

Parliament unanimously backed a motion from Foreign Minister Murray McCully expressing "deep concern" about the situation in the Ukraine.

Up to 16,000 Russian troops have tightened their stranglehold on Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, openly defying the US and the European Union.

Ukraine's former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko has appealed for the US and Britain to adopt the "strongest means" against Russia.

If things continue to deteriorate, NZ's chief envoy in Moscow could be recalled. Ultimately, the Russian ambassador could be expelled, writes John Armstrong.

They stood together with their arms linked: a priest, a former soldier, two housewives and a teacher.

President Viktor Yanukovych has defiantly refused a chorus of calls from global leaders and opposition parties.

What's happening in Syria today is an abomination, one that the world is watching coldly from a distance, writes Professor Stephen Hawking.

It seems wrong, and decidedly odd, that the Government should be cancelling the passports of New Zealanders who have gone to fight in the Syrian civil war.

Kiwis who travel to Syria to fight with rebel forces against the Assad regime are being misinformed by recruiters over social media, a Syrian living in Auckland says.

Aid workers braved mortar and small arms fire to evacuate Syrian civilians from a besieged area of the city of Homs.

Prime Minister says Kiwis returning from Syria deemed to have been `radicalised' will be monitored.

John Key says there are New Zealanders fighting in anti-government forces in Syria, while others have been blocked from going there by having their passports cancelled.