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

Behind a closed curtain a Syrian man in his mid-30s is preparing himself and his 3-year-old daughter for an onslaught.

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

Syrian Government troops have seized the last rebel stronghold on the border with Lebanon.

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.

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

An Auckland woman born in Ukraine says residents in her home country are ready to take up arms against Russian occupiers.

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

Prime Minister John Key says New Zealand athletes should complete in the Sochi Winter Paralympics despite Russia's intervention in 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.

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.

It's Hungary's Holocaust memorial year - but why are Jewish groups in the country intending to boycott all state-organised events?

Soaring defence budgets in China and Russia mean that global military spending is growing for the first time in five years, according to forecasts.

Al-Qaeda has disavowed its offshoot in Syria, seeking to distance itself from a group too extreme even for the organisation founded by Osama bin Laden.

Britain should not have gone to war in 1914 and the decision to do so was the "biggest error in modern history", according to historian Niall Ferguson.

Syrian negotiators have reached their first deal in peace talks in Geneva, an agreement to allow women and children to escape the siege of rebel-held districts of the city of Homs.