The Baltic states banning of Russian media agencies Sputnik and RT amounts to "outright censorship" that aims at causing the European Union and Moscow to become estranged, Claude Chollet, the head of the Journalism Observatory (Observatoire du journalisme) association for media freedom, told Sputnik on Tuesday

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's move to convert the iconic Istanbul-based Hagia Sophia cathedral into a mosque pursued to consolidate his power amid declining popularity, but the bet on Islamist ideology is unlikely to win him any new supporters, experts told Sputnik

US troops have left five bases in Afghanistan and the number of servicemen in Afghanistan has decreased as part of the peace agreement reached with the Taliban in Qatar in February, US Special Representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad said