Belarus

Day 487 of the invasion of Ukraine. Summary of key events in the last 24 hours:

Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was notorious for unbridled and profane challenges to authority even before the attempted rebellion that he mounted Saturday. The reported agreement for him to go into exile in Belarus would place him in a country where such behavior is even less acceptable than in his homeland.

Slovenia has been elected a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for 2024-2025, securing the requisite two-thirds majority among UN member states in the first round of voting on 6 June to beat Belarus in the Eastern European group.

Belarus and Russia have no plans to adopt a joint currency in the near future, Belarus' strongman leader has announced.

Speaking at a meeting with the head of Russia's central bank, Alexander Lukashenko said that introducing the Russian ruble in Belarus would not be "an easy process," and that the authorities in Minsk had no intentions so far of doing so.

Slovenia's and Belarusian permanent representatives to the UN faced off in a lively exchange in New York on 16 May as they presented their countries' rival bids for non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council in 2024-25. Both faced accusations about their countries running at the behest of other powers.

Day 448 of the invasion of Ukraine. Summary of key events in the last 24 hours:

Fighting is still going on for Bakhmut.
The United Nations has said that it continues to work on extending the agreement on the export of Ukrainian grain.

Russia and Belarus are forced to fight and protect their interests in the context of the informational, political and economic war that the West is waging against them, he said at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin within the High State Council of the Federal State.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres reiterated today the importance of preserving the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, in light of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, the State Department announced.

Lukashenko began a two-day visit to Moscow

According to Sergey Naryshkin, the West is doing this in order to open a second front because the war in Ukraine "is not developing in favor of Kyiv".
"We see constant attempts by Washington, Brussels and London to convince the Georgian leadership of the need to open a so-called second front," Naryshkin said during his visit to Belarus, according to CNN.