French and Russian Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin held a telephone conversation on Wednesday. The conversation took place at the initiative of the French side, the Kremlin's press service reports.

The Presidents discussed, among other things, the steps for resolving the situation in the Donbas. Macron and Putin praised the ceasefire agreed upon by the Trilateral Contact Group.

Putin once again pointed out the importance of Kyiv's direct dialogue with the so-called Donetsk and …

Mercenaries from the Russian Private Military Company the Wagner Group, who were detained near Minsk, can be handed over to Russia very soon, reported Interfax, citing an unnamed source.

According to media reports, the mercenaries "will be handed over to the Russia for further investigation in the near future, possibly before the end of the week." They will leave Minsk, presumably by air.

The Russian Embassy in Belarus has confirmed that work is underway to return detained Russians.

Earlier, …

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said that it is time to talk seriously about sanctions against Belarus in response to the government's repression against the opposition, reports Delfi.

"The dynamics are such that we should talk seriously about sanctions for Belarus, because what is happening now, even from a distance, is beyond the repressions that the regime has carried out for years. Now we see both dead and wounded people. We see several thousand people who have been detained, or their …

Three Russian diplomats must leave the Slovak Republic, said the head of the press department of the Slovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Affairs Juraj Tomaga, Radio Liberty reports.

"We cannot name the employees of the Russian diplomatic mission, but we confirm that a decision has been made to expel three employees of the Russian Representative Office in Slovakia," Tomaga said.

According to him, the abuse of visas issued by the Slovak consulate in St. Petersburg, which resulted in …

On August 9, at 6 p.m., a plane carrying the family of Belarusian President Alexander Lukasnenko landed in Bodrum, Turkey, said Andrey Suzdaltsev, an assistant professor in the Department of World Economics and World Policy at the Russian National Research University of the Higher School of Economics.

According to Suzdaltsev, Lukashenko’s children and grandchildren were on board the plane.

"It's not for nothing. Lukashenko is madly afraid," the Russian newspaper Moscow Komsomolets quoted the …

Construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, halted by U.S. sanctions, may no longer resume, and investments in the 10-billion-euro project may have to be completely written off, according to the IFRS report for the first half of 2020 by the German concern Uniper - one of the five European partners of Gazprom, which financed half of the cost of the project.

"Given the new U.S. sanctions, there is an increased risk that construction will be frozen or completely halted," the report said.

The …

Presidential elections in Belarus were accompanied by total falsification of the result, and the election committee's statements about Lukashenko's decisive victory with a result of 80% are doubtful, stated Konstantin Zatulin, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee for CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots.

"Lukashenko has crossed all limits. We do not want any discord and "Maidan" in Belarus, but he is insane. The problem is that the head of Belarus is a …

Alexander Lukashenko's main rival in the Belarusian presidential election, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, has left the country. "Tikhanovskaya is safe, she is in Lithuania," Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevičius said on Twitter.

In the presidential elections of Belarus on August 9, according to preliminary data of the Central Elections Committee, the incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko received 80.08% of the votes, Tikhanovskaya - 10.9%. On August 10, Tikhanovskaya filed a complaint with …