As the program to destroy Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons begins, the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is winning some rare praise from the West for its cooperation in the ambitious mission. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that it was a “credit” for the Assad regime that the process of destroying the chemical weapons had begun in “record time” and with the compliance of Damascus.

In Georgia, it's called the fall of Sukhumi. In Abkhazia, it's called the liberation of Sukhum. Whatever it's called, it happened 20 years ago, and that's about the only thing that Georgians and Abkhaz can agree on. On Sept. 27, Georgian government officials commemorated the day at Hero's Memorial, where the government of the autonomous republic of Abkhazia in exile called for a new strategy to solve the Abkhaz conflict and expressed hope that "historical justice will be restored and that Abkhaz and Georgian people will live in peace."

Campaigners supporting the environmental group Greenpeace have briefly disrupted a Champions League match in Switzerland in a protest against the Russian energy giant Gazprom, a sponsor of the game. Four activists on October 1 abseiled from the roof of the stadium to the field in Basel and unfurled a banner that read: “Gazprom. Don’t Foul The Arctic.”

First, Vladimir Putin accused Hillary Rodham Clinton of inciting protests against him at the end of 2011. The next fall, the Russian president threw the U.S. Agency for International Development out of his country. Then he decided civic groups that get U.S. financing must be foreign agents.

The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council have agreed on a resolution that will require Syria to give up its chemical weapons, but the text will not threaten the use of force for a failure to comply, officials said. The office of the American ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, announced the deal.

Estonia’s capital seems a peaceful place. Tallinn’s cobblestoned streets are lined by medieval walls and towers, and tourists stroll amid churches and coffee shops. But Estonians live in a rough neighborhood; their eastern neighbor is Russia, which has never fully accepted that Estonia prefers the company of EU and NATO countries.

The Kremlin on Sunday accused Washington of trying to sabotage a U.S.-Russian agreement for Syrian leader Bashar Assad to surrender his chemical arsenal. “Our U.S. partners are beginning to blackmail us," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Sunday in an interview with the First Channel, a state-owned television network.