Minsk

Upon his return to Budapest, Szijjarto welcomed another international pariah, this time in the form of Sergey Aleinik, the Belarusian foreign minister.

"If we differ on the most existential of issues, it will be hard to cooperate on other fronts," summarises Andrzej Sadecki, head of the Central Europe team and a Hungary specialist at OSW, the Warsaw-based Center for Eastern Studies.

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said that Ukraine has offered Minsk a non-aggression pact, reported the BeLTa state news agency reported, as quoted by Reuters.

Lukashenko shared the alleged proposal at a meeting of government and law enforcement officials, where he also accused the West of arming militants in Ukraine who could potentially destabilize the situation in Belarus.

It said senior Kremlin officials continue to hold high-level meetings with the Belarusian leadership.
By doing so, they could create the conditions for a major Russian attack on Ukraine from Belarus, but that, they add, is unlikely to happen in the coming weeks.

The Belarusian security company GuardService(Gardservis), the only one allowed to own firearms by order of Alexander Lukashenko, has increased its staff several times and is preparing to participate in military operations.

A Norwegian lawmaker representing the anti-immigrant right has announced that he has nominated his compatriot, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize.

According to Christian Tübring-Gedde, Stoltenberg deserves the award for his exemplary work during the difficult period of the brutal invasion against Ukraine.

The words of the former Italian Prime Minister, who was legally sentenced to prison, and is now the leader of the party he founded, which is part of the winning right-wing coalition, were uttered yesterday, during a closed meeting with the newly elected Forza senators in the Palazzo Montecitori.

Here are the highlights of events related to the war in Ukraine over the past 24 hours:

Moscow blamed Ukraine's military intelligence for the Crimean bridge explosion

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky called on Oct. 11 for wealthy Western nations to help Kiev create an "air shield" after a rash of deadly Russian aerial attacks.

A spokesman for the European Commission said today that there could be no credence in claims by Russian investigative services that the truck that allegedly blew up on Saturday on the Kerch (Crimea) bridge had left Bulgaria and passed through Georgia, Armenia and North Ossetia before arriving in the Krasnodar region (Russia).