Belarus is a small country, highly dependent on Moscow. It's been 14 or 15 times since the start of the war to see Mr Putin. He could not exist, could not continue in power were it not for Russia. But he has helped to solve a problem for Wagner and for Mr Putin. What happens to this private army? The Wagner group did not want to be dissolved. Vladimir Putin was insisting that it should be absorbed into the Russian military. And now we don't know whether that part of the deal will be honoured. We haven't actually seen the Wagner mercenaries moving into Belarus yet at all. So you can't tell which of those two contradictory statements is currently operative or currently
Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group fighters are said to be welcome in safe-haven Belarus. We ask how Aleksandr Lukashenko, the country’s puppet president, ended up in the role of peace broker. Our correspondent investigates why so many American states are having to bail out public-transport companies. And the diplomatic benefits of wearing red on visits to China.
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