The project was launched in the aftermath of last year’s unprecedented mass protests which clearly jolted Lukashenko after his disputed re-election to a sixth term and the widespread, and often brutal, use of security forces and the courts to crush dissent.

Azerbaijan’s Energy Ministry welcomed the decision and is now scheduled to produce 668,000 bpd in February.

Gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 10.7 percent year-on-year in January-November after contracting 5.9 percent in the same period a year earlier.

Uzbekistan plans to sell 32 large state-owned enterprises and assets and transfer more than 300 small assets to private hands in 2022 and expects that the state budget will receive $936 million.

A total of 7,939 people have been detained in connection with the unrest, Kazakhstan’s Interior Ministry said. Tokayev said a death toll, including civilian casualties, was being established.

Putin has said nothing about any new incursion more than seven years after Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula and Moscow proxies took over large chunks of eastern Ukraine – 14,000 people have died in the ensuing conflict.