Politicians

Military delegations from Türkiye, Russia and Ukraine and a delegation from United Nations will meet in Istanbul on July 13 to discuss the safe export of Ukrainian grain, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar has said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi will meet in Tehran on July 19 for a Syria summit, the Kremlin announced.

"The president's visit to Tehran is being planned for July 19," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on July 12 adding that the trio would meet for Syrian peace talks.

Belarusian mothers launched a flash mob to protest against the involvement of Belarusians in the Russian war against Ukraine. They put their children's toys in conspicuous places with paper sheets reading calls to stop the war. 

Meanwhile, self-proclaimed Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko threatens Ukraine to join Russia in the war against Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ordered the Ukrainian army to recapture the coastal areas in the southern part of the country, for which Ukraine is gathering a million-strong fighting force equipped with Western weapons, according to the Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov.

Sri Lanka is in a political vacuum for a second day Monday with opposition leaders yet to agree on who should replace its roundly rejected leaders, whose residences are occupied by protesters, angry over the country's economic woes.

Sri Lanka Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has announced that he will resign from his post in order to ensure the continuation of the government and the safety of all the citizens.

Former US president Donald Trump campaigned on July 9 in Alaska for Sarah Palin, the northern state's former governor whose ascendency many view as the populist precursor to Trump's anti-elite movement.

The two firebrand politicians have both been key figures in the Republican party's shift over the past decade to target the aggrieved working class.

Sri Lanka's president and prime minister agreed to resign on July 10 after the country's most chaotic day in months of political turmoil, with protesters storming both officials' homes and setting fire to one of the buildings in a rage over the nation's severe economic crisis.

Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has agreed to resign after party leaders in Parliament demanded both he and the embattled president step down on the day protesters stormed the president's residence and office.

Resigned Prime Minister Kiril Petkov will be on a one-day visit to Greece, where, at the invitation of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, he will participate in the official ceremony marking the completion of the construction of the Greece-Bulgaria Intersystem Gas Connection (IGB).