BELARUSIAN PRESIDENT ADOPTS POPULIST LINE.

No Belarusian bureaucrat will be paid until all pensioners have been, bureaucrats will have to work longer hours, and anyone failing to pay the general population their checks on time will face criminal sanctions, Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko said June 9, according to Itar-Tass. Lukashenko also pressed the banks to fund his country’s failing industries, but Belarusian central bank chief Stanislav Bogdashevich said the banks were in no position to help. Lukashenko has already pushed them to make loans which they would never have considered even in Soviet times, he said.

Tabunshchik Wins Gagauz Runoff.