of cyberattacks from china, russia and iran, which have targeted november's us presidential election. amongst those responsible are the group accused of hacking the 2016 us presidential election. all three countries have previously denied allegations of cyber—espionage. rio tinto‘s ceo is stepping down over the mining giant's destruction of historically significant aboriginal rockshelters. jean—sebastien jacques, the chief executive of rio tinto, will step down by the end of march after failing to contain the fallout from the destruction of the ancient aboriginal site in western australia. thousands of migrants are spending a third night sleeping out in the open, on the greek island of lesbos after a fire destroyed their makeshift camp. authorities are investigating whether tuesday night's fires were started deliberately after covid—19 tests led to the isolation of 35 refugees. now on bbc news: hardtalk — stephen sackur speaks to lithuania's

president, gitanus nauseda. welcome to hardtalk. i am stephen sackur. the daily streets protests demanding the resignation of belarus‘s authoritarian president, alexander lukashenko, have not yet tipped the balance against his regime. lukashenko is still there, the security forces are still doing his bidding, so how is the geopolitics of this going to play out? my guest is gitanas nauseda, the president of neighbouring lithuania. will moscow's will prevail in belarus or will people power take the country in a new direction?

president gitanas nauseda, in vilnius, welcome to hardtalk. good evening. mr president, how do you see the power dynamic in belarus right now? do you think president lukashenko has ridden out the storm? yes, of course, alexander lukashenko tries to buy the time and tries to suppress the protests of peaceful people in the states. right now, the people are fighting for their fundamental rights to have free elections, to express their opinion about what is going wrong in belarus and, unfortunately, we see a lot of violations and this continues and it brings very huge concern to all of us, not only

for neighbouring countries, lithuania, latvia, estonia and poland and the ukraine, but also for the european union. this is the reason why we started to react very fast and we propose the plan of the escalation of the situation. we consolidated our efforts together with presidents of surrounding countries. unfortunately, alexander lukashenko was not able to take this initiative and he turned towards vladimir putin. probably this is the reason why the situation in the last days and the last weeks deteriorated, has deteriorated and we see again the violations, we see just detained people, disappearing people, and we see very selective and targeted attacks against the people or persons which are in national co—ordination committee. so, the situation is not calm and it's not...

this situation is certainly not calm, mr president. you just referred to alexander lu kashenko as the president of belarus. i want to be clear about this, do you still recognise his legitimacy as the head of state or are you now of the view that he has no legitimacy because, as you said recently, there was no free, fair election in belarus. is he legitimate or not? i am talking about alexander lukashenko as a person. of course, we cannot talk about elections which took place on august 9th as fair and free elections. so, the result is not legitimate and alexander lu kashenko is not legitimate president of this country.

but of course nobody can neglect and reject that alexander lukashenko still has certain power and this power he is using, unfortunately, in very bad direction and we cannot agree on this. you are the neighbour of belarus. you are where most of the belarusian senior opposition figures who have been forced out of belarus have gathered, not least, svetla na kuznetsova, who was of course the candidate who ran against lukashenko and she claimed she had won the election, had it not been rigged. are you saying that svetla na ti kha novs kaya is actually the winner of the election and are you recognising her as the de facto leader of belarus, in exile? we can call her a de facto leader but the problem

is that the elections of august 9th, they are spoiled, and we cannot prove that by giving the figures, giving the result and nobody can say what votes are the votes indeed and what votes are the fake votes because appearance rate in some districts of belarus during the election was more than 100%. so this is a problem to say what was the real result, we can guess that madam tikhanovskaya was the winner of those elections. we treat her as a national leader and she is the leader of the opposition at the moment right now. she is in lithuania for the moment and she is safe together with her family. right, so you are offering her protection but i wonder how

helpless, how frustrated do you feel right now, mr president. you, as you have said, you have spoken out very loud against lukashenko for weeks now and, even today as we speak to each other, the belarusian paramilitary forces are continuing to repress the protesters, they are picking up senior opposition figures on the streets. they picked up another one a very short time ago, maxim znap. that follows the detention of maria kolesnikova. you know this is continuing. your voice makes no difference. so, this is the reason why we need actions. yes, rhetoric is good but even strong rhetoric is not enough, we need actions. and three baltic states took the initiative and showed this example of how to deal with lukashenko and initiated the national sanctions list. we have 30 persons in each of these lists, including alexander lu kashenko.

i am stressing that it is extremely important that other regions and countries, european union as a whole, united states, united kingdom, canada, should apply the same sanctions to the belarusian regime and, yes, we had a european council some time ago. i was very satisfied the with result of this counsel because of their strong commitments, strong judgement of the situation. all leaders spoke about very clear vision about what to do with belarus but, unfortunately, so far, we do not see the list of european union and, according to some drafts, i can say that there are 17 persons included and lukashenko is excluded from the list. right.

so, mr president, let me stop you there, this is very important, people around the world need to hear what you think is going on. you are saying, as you understand it, the eu's list of potential targets for new sanctions in belarus, the individuals, do not include lu kashenko himself. you baltic states have already imposed your targeted sanctions on a list of individuals, including lukashenko, so why do you think the european unio as a whole is not following your lead? the logic behind is to leave some room for possible mediation in the future. we leave the door, or the window, open for possible negotiations with alexander lu kashenko, of course, including the representatives

of civil society. but i really have my doubts that this is still possible. we see that there is a certain breaking point and this breaking point is the contact of alexander lukashenko with the russian president, vladimir putin, and we see that lukashenko is just not ready to have any mediation, especially from the side of the european union and what is really extremely important is that the mediation includes representatives of civil society. if they are not representative of civil society, what mediation is it? mediation between lukashenko and putin? we're talking not about this mediation, we are about the mediation which includes every party and this is not the case and i have very big doubts that it would happen in the future because of, unfortunately, limited readiness of alexander lukashenko to go this way.

let me be blunt with you, why do you think the big powers of the european union, including france and germany, are not prepared to go as far and condemn lukashenko in the same language that you use? why? you know, we are very close to belarus nation, not only in a geographic sense, but also in an emotional sense. we feel the pain of those people in the streets of minsk and other streets and villages in belarus. we see how they are suffering. we hear the stories about violations, about the tortures and we are just emotionally very close to them.

maybe this is not the case if we are talking about the countries which are really distant from belarus. but, nevertheless, it's extremely important to fight this common denominator in the european union and sometimes it's pretty hard to find the solution. if they find the solution at a political level. do you think, and you just used the word ‘torture‘ in terms of what is going on with the paramilitary forces in belarus. do you think that, right now, alexander lukashenko is guilty of against crimes against humanity and do you want to see him prosecuted for what is happening right now? i am mindful that your foreign minister, mr linkevicius, recently said that he is seeing stalinist mkvd methods being applied on the streets of minsk in 21st century europe. if you are serious about that, then presumably you want to seek lukashenko in a court room?

you know, first of all we need clear and detailed investigation. this investigation is not possible right now. if this investigation is over, then we can name the persons who are guilty for this violence, but you are totally right by saying that it reminds us of the soviet time. we see how they are targeting the people which are in national co—ordination committee or council, svetla na alexievich, other members of the co—ordination council. i remember the time about 40, 50 years ago and this time was in the soviet union, rostropovich and solzhenitsyn, they were extradited

from the country and they were persecuted and we see the same story here in belarus and we know and it shows that people are different and the new generations are coming but the methods of certain institutions remain the same. you are playing a dangerous game, mr president. vilnius, where you sit today, has been described as a second capital of the belarusian opposition and everything you told me today shows how determined you are to speak out against lukashenko and demand an end to his regime. you are going to be directly at odds with moscow and you know it, and it's very possible that you will suffer consequences as a result of that? you know, democratic values, principal values, does not have a prize.

this is not cost benefit analysis like in the economic policy or economic analysis. this is the principles, the fundamental values we strongly believe in. we didn't forget our history, our newest history of lithuania. let me remind you, 30 years ago lithuania declared independence. and it was like a dark tunnel in our life and we had hoped there will be light on the end of this tunnel. and, at that time, a small country, iceland, far away from lithuania, stepped in and recognised our independence and we didn't forget it. we think that now we must do the same that iceland did 30 years ago. but the danger is you may be inadvertently assisting

vladimir putin. he wants to portray what's happening in belarus as an exercise in meddling from western interests, the european union, nato, forces trying to move into russia's sphere of influence and he says that is illegitimate and dangerous, not just for minsk, but for moscow as well. by being so strident, you may be helping putin with his narrative. you know, you cannot push anyone who is already hugged by the bear. so i think this as a consequence of economic policy or economic model, who lukashenko implemented in the last 20 years,

and this economic model was based on the cheap energy resources coming from russia. cheap salaries or cheap labour force and, of course, it is not sustainable. the belarussian economy is not competitive and it could be kept above the water only with cheap energy resources from russia. what is now galling, we see high indebtedness of belarus towards russia, about 50% of this debt belongs to russia. and we see economic trade ties, very close ties with russia and, of course, in this situation, lukashenko loses his power and putin has many instruments, many instruments, just to achieve his goal and his goal is, his ultimate goal, is to merge both states into one body

and now he sees lukashenko as a very convenient partner who lost the power and he who is totally exposed to the will of vladimir putin. yes, yes, this is a threat... crosstalk. ..but we should not blame belarussian people that the situation is like this. but what is the endgame here, mr president? you have just said the russians want to see belarus effectively merged with russia by economic and political means and they will use whatever leverage they have over lukashenko to achieve that over the next few weeks and months. so what is the endgame? if lu kashenko looks like he is going to be toppled, do you believe russia will intervene militarily? i think they is no need to intervene militarily

because they can use another instrument and probably they learned some lessons from ukraine. so they will try to intervene in a much more subtle way and much will depend on the people, on the ordinary people which are protesting in the streets. and we have to help them. and the european union and other powers in the world should not stand aside and just expressing rhetoric. rhetoric is not enough today. we need actions and we need actions as quick as possible because otherwise it will be too late. i want to ask you a question based on a bigger picture. that is, whether you are worried, right now, that the will of the west, and let's talk about both

the european union and nato, the will of the western powers to stand up to vladimir putin is not good enough, not strong enough. i'm thinking, for example, of the fairly muted reaction so far to what the germans insist was the poisoning of alexei navalny on russian territory. i'm also thinking of the american decision earlier this summer to begin withdrawing troops from germany and president macron recently saying that he fears nato is brain dead. do you fear that the west is losing the will to confront vladimir putin? i expect much more, really, i hope that we have to find the will, the political will, to act much more decisively than we do right now.

so this is a problem. the european union was blamed many times that the european union reacts too slow, too late, and too little, so let us prove that the reality is different. let us take decisive measures and i hope that it will happen. nato, as an organisation, is totally good for lithuania. we think nato organisation, the brain of nato, is not dead and we enjoy very good cooperation with nato on many levels, on the level of common military plans. we have enhanced presence in lithuania several years in a row. 0urselves, we are very serious and responsible member of nato, ally of the nato, spending 2% of gdp, and we expect that other countries will do the same, will increase the fund spending. i don't think that the potential of nato is exhausted.

i feel this is only one organisation, a very effective organisation of defence and deterrence. mr president, we're almost out of time. i want to raise other issue with you. you have talked about your discontent with the eu reaction to what is happening in belarus, but of course the eu is preoccupied with other challenges, not least ironing out all of the problems connected with brexit. the british are due to end their transition relationship with the eu at the end of this year and the hope is there will be a trade agreement but, right now, that looks very difficult, not least because the british government has just declared that it is going to pass legislation in the british parliament, which ministers have explicitly said will override elements of the withdrawal agreement with the eu and which will, in fact,

violate international law. now, as a head of state of an eu member, how do you feel about what the british government is currently doing? i feel not good and they regret the decision of the united kingdom to leave the european union, but i respect the decision. but now what is going on, to renegotiate, to correct the withdrawal agreement is just not acceptable and this is really pretty hard to talk about such things because we have to respect what we reached during a very long negotiation period with big efforts of the main negotiators. and we achieved this result and it's just not appropriate to reconsider this agreement right now. and, a final thought, all of the tough talk right now from london, from the boris johnson government, about how they, within weeks, may well

have to walk away from any effort to get a trade agreement and accept there will be no trade deal with the eu after december 31 of this year, do you see this is just more political manoeuvring and bluffing or do you take it seriously when borisjohnson says that britain can regard no deal as a good outcome? is he being serious or not? no deal is not a good outcome for everybody, for all countries, for european union and britain too. so we are interested, and i'm talking not only about the european union but also about my country, we are interested to have the process done and to have the united kingdom as a good foreign trade partner. we are like—minded countries in other fields too, security, defence policy, so let us co—operate

in the future and let us not undermine our good cooperation until now. all right, well, mr president, gitanas nauseda, i thank you very much indeed forjoining me from vilnius. hello. some warmer weather on the way for many of us to end the weekend, but also some heavy rain over the weekend in parts of scotland. and in fact, during thursday, the rain clouds were gathering and for scotland and northern ireland for friday morning, some wet and windy weather on the way as this area of low pressure drives the weather front south across the uk.

this is how it looks as we start the day. this is where the rain will be sitting first thing in the morning. for much of the uk, the day starting dry. temperatures at their lowest with the clear spells in the east and south—east of england. some rural spots, around five or six degrees. so through friday morning, the wet weather will push south across scotland and northern ireland. some of the rain quite heavy but by the afternoon, it's brightening up. there'll be a few blustery showers with the sunshine into northern and western scotland. the rain reaching into northern england at this stage, most substantial to the west of the pennines and into north wales. now, it's a blustery day wherever you are, but particularly through northern england, northern ireland and scotland. these are average speeds, some gusts around 45mph or so. south of our rain band, it's mainly dry. parts of eastern england seeing a few hazy, sunny spells. this is where we'll see the high temperatures 20, maybe 21 degrees. for friday evening and night, a fairly narrow band of rain makes further slow progress south through wales and england. behind it, some clear spells and further blustery showers

into parts of northern ireland, northern and western scotland. a cooler night in eastern scotland, a milder night across much of england as the area of cloud on this weatherfront, not much rain, makes further slow progress southwards. it is still around on saturday morning, still capable of producing a few showers or a few spots of rain, so don't be surprised if you encounter this. still a few showers in northern ireland, towards northern and western scotland, still quite blustery here, but many places having a dry saturday with broken cloud and sunny spells. temperatures for the most part into the mid to high teens. this area of rain will push in towards northern ireland and scotland as we go through saturday night. but particularly in scotland, saturday into sunday and especially in the hills of the west, it is looking very wet. some spots may end up with over 100mm of rain, bringing a risk of flooding. whereas elsewhere on sunday, a surge of sunshine and warmth coming from the south which will continue into monday. that's your forecast. bye— bye.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. i'm david eades. the european union delivers an ultimatum to the uk — ditch plans to alter the brexit divorce deal orface legal action. the boss of one of the world's biggest mining companies rio tinto is forced to quit over the destruction of a sacred aboriginal site in western australia. a third night stranded without shelter for thousands of migrants after their camp on the greek island of lesbos burned to the ground. microsoft says it's thwarted a series of cyberattacks from china, russia and iran, targeting the us presidential election in november. and serena williams‘ hopes of winning a 24th grand slam

at the us open tennis are over,