A brass band played, fighter jets streaked the clear blue sky and a red carpet adorned the airport tarmac on the day in May 2016 when Vladimir Putin came to Athens for a visit. "Mr. President, welcome to Greece," the Greek defense minister, Panos Kammenos, said in Russian as he smiled broadly and greeted a stone-faced Putin at the base of the stairs from the plane.
On World Refugee Day, more than 60,000 refugees and migrants are stranded in Greece. They're eventually supposed to go forward to other countries in Europe or be sent back to Turkey, but the process is barely moving.
President Barack Obama opened his final foreign trip as president Tuesday with reassuring words in Greece about the U.S. commitment to NATO even as he prepares to hand off to a Donald Trump administration, saying Democratic and Republican administrations alike recognize the importance of the alliance to the trans-Atlantic relationship. Without mentioning Trump by name, Obama told Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos that a strong NATO is of "utmost importance" and would provide "significant continuity even as we see a transition in government in the United States."