Belarus

• Lithuania closed two of its six border crossings with landlocked Belarus because of fears over the growing presence of Wagner Group mercenaries in Belarus.
• Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland are considering closing all of their border crossings with Belarus for the same reason.
• Meanwhile, Wagner Group continues to solidify its presence in Belarus. It formally registered a Belarusian entity - specifically, an "educational organization." Perhaps its leaders were inspired to violent academia by the Taliban, whose name means "students" in Pashto.

• Jimmy "Barbeque" Cherizier - the leader of Haiti's powerful G9 Family and Allies gang - said he would welcome a multinational police force to end the stranglehold gangs like his have on the country - but with conditions.
• Barbeque portrayed his gang as part of a solution to the root problem of corruption and weak governance rather than part of the problem a multinational police force aims to solve.
• He said he would "applaud" that force if it arrests Prime Minister Henry and "the corrupt oligarchs, politicians and politicians who are selling weapons and ammunition to the people in the underprivileged neighborhoods."
• However, he also threatened violence against foreign police if they commit abuses against Haitians. Haiti is still stinging from a series of terrible abuses it suffered at the hands of UN peacekeepers in the early 2000s (peacekeepers were found to have caused a cholera epidemic that killed over 10,000 Haitians, and dozens of peacekeepers were accused of sexual abuse against Haitians).
• That tainted legacy is one of the reasons the U.S. has resisted calls to lead a future multinational force. Kenya has stepped up with an offer to lead the force, and several Caribbean countries have committed troops for it.
• UN SecGen Guterres welcomed Kenya's offer and encouraged other countries to send troops too.

• The U.S. imposed a visa ban on three Congolese officials for trafficking endangered wildlife to China.
• The irony / tragedy is that these men are some of DRC's top anti-wildlife trafficking officials: a former Director General of the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation (ICCN), a former Department Head of the DRC Management Authority for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the Director-Coordinator of the DRC CITES Management Authority and Legal Advisor to ICCN.