The European Union needs to accept responsibility for the lack of a common asylum policy, which has transformed this year's growing influx of refugees from a manageable problem into yet another political crisis.

Given the prominent roles these nations have in reducing the once thriving Middle Eastern country to rubble and displacing millions in the process, it is nothing short of hypocrisy for them to essentially demand refugees to respect their borders when they had no qualms about invading Syria's border.

Russia's recent movements near Syria's city of Latakia suggest that Moscow plans to establish a "forward air operating base" there, the US has said.