On Thursday a senior Indian official appeared to endorse Russia’s position in Ukraine in recent days, even as Delhi urged all parties involved to seek a peaceful resolution to the diplomatic crisis. When asked for India’s official assessment of the events in Ukraine, National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon responded. 

A group of United Nations human rights experts voiced concern on Thursday over reports of excessive use of force against protesters and journalists during the recent wave of antigovernment demonstrations that has spread across the country.

A U.N. special envoy was forced to abandon a mission to Ukraine's Russian-occupied Crimea region on Wednesday after being detained and besieged inside a cafe by a hostile crowd shouting "Russia! Russia!" Dutch diplomat Robert Serry flew to Istanbul after the incident and, according to the United Nations, would head from there back to Kiev.

In his first public comments since stepping down as US ambassador to Syria on Friday, Robert Ford addressed the failure to contain Syria's bloody civil war, laying most of the blame at the feet of President Bashar al-Assad and his government's international backers. Speaking at a conference at Tufts University last night, his outlook was bleak, warning that a fractured rebellion, the presence of Al Qaeda inspired fighters on the battlefield, and the fears of the country's minorities are a recipe for prolonged conflict. 

President Obama's diplomatic effort to head off a violent breakup of Ukraine ran aground Saturday as a top U.N. envoy was blocked from a peace mission to the disputed region of Crimea and Russia's parliament, or Duma, approved a request by Russian President Vladimir Putin to send military forces to Ukraine in support of pro-Russian Ukrainians.

Great Lakes envoy Mary Robinson is in the Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, calling on authorities to fulfil their commitments to achieve lasting peace, as the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the DRC is due to visit alleged massacre sites in the restive eastern part of the vast country.

UN officials lashed out as violence threatened efforts to help civilians. 'We understand that a war is going on. But even wars have rules,' the UN humanitarian chief said angrily. It has not been a promising 24 hours for mediation and humanitarian efforts in Syria. The UN's humanitarian chief lambasted the effort to provide aid to the Syrian city of Homs Thursday night, and today, UN special envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi warned that the failure of ongoing negotiations was "staring us in the face."

A day after coming under mortar fire in Homs, aid workers gathered at the edge of a besieged rebel-held district on Sunday to evacuate civilians and deliver humanitarian supplies to 2,500 people trapped by Syria’s civil war.