“Even Lenin and Stalin never proposed to split the country into parts and annex them to the USSR,” – declared Lukashenko on Wednesday during his meeting with the chairman of the State Council of Dagestan Magomedali Magomedov, who arrived with a working visit in Minsk. Lukashenko called “inadmissible” Vladimir Putin’s last week’s proposals on the future perspectives of the Russia-Belarus “union”.

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Only some 3,6% of Belarusian nationals want their republic to become part of Russia. Such are the outcomes of the sociological research, mentioned in an interview to “Zvyazda” by the director of the Institute of social-political research of the presidential Administration of Belarus Evgeny Matusevich.

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Poland determined to introduce visa regime for Belarusians starting from July 2003. However, the European Union consented to endow Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine with a special “neighbor’s” status. It remains unclear whether this will find any juridical expression but Poland is not going to limit her contacts with eastern neighbors and will do her best in order to ease the visa procedure for travelers.

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Three ZUBR activists received in total 25 days of arrest. Judge Tatiana Pavluchuk found them guilty of running an unsanctioned protest against Belarus’ incorporation into Russia at the Russian embassy.

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Previously they used to define the term “mixed feelings” as seeing your mother-in-law falling off a cliff in your own car. Now the term could mean one’s listening on TV to Putin’s big talk and seeing next to him confused and silent Lukashenko. Putin, meantime, is saying that the only way-out of the deadlock for Belarus is entering Russia with a common president, parliament and legislation, while Lukashenko does not counter, but is sitting motionlessly. It could well be that he’d like to say something, but Russians don’t let it happen. So, “mixed feelings” is witnessing how Putin strips Lukashenko of all his far-reaching ambitions. On the other hand, it is an utter abomination to see how the Russian president is annihilating in words a whole country, demonstrating no lack of enthusiasm on his part.

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The Minister of foreign affairs of Belarus Mikhail Khvostov will pay an official visit to Moscow on August 21, RIA “Novosti” was told in the Belarusian Foreign Office. Within the framework of his visit Khvostov will hold negotiations with the states-secretary, first deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Valery Loschinin. The Belarusian side considers the afore-coming meeting to be “a continuation of dialogue in light of agreements, reached in course of the last meeting between the heads of state of Belarus and Russia in Moscow”. Then the leaders of the two countries entitled the Foreign Ministries to “resume the coordination of their positions and work out concerted strategy in the OSCE and CoE relations”, reports the Belarusian FM press-service.

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Now it is way more problematic to find job in the capital than it was a year ago, state the experts of the Minsk city employment center. In mid-summer the excess of manpower in the capital constituted around three thousand people, while last summer job proposals from companies and organizations exceeded almost by 1,300 the actual number of registered unemployed. Today 180 workless females and 80 males compete for 100 vacant jobs.

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