Ceremony of laying wreaths at Victory Monument in Minsk

Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko is taking part in the official ceremonies marking Victory Day in Minsk on 9 May.

The head of state laid a wreath at the Victory Monument in Minsk. Aleksandr Lukashenko was joined at the ceremony by his three sons.

Wreaths and flowers were also laid at the monument by heads of national government agencies, representatives of the Belarusian People's Congress and the National Assembly of Belarus, the judiciary, veterans' organizations, security forces, public associations, political parties, and community activists.

"We celebrate the day of the Great Victory, which gave our people life and freedom. We celebrate it year after year with parades and fireworks. With tears and with sorrow. It has been this way since the very moment Levitan's voice rang out across the Soviet land. Back then, the announcer said the word everyone had dreamed of hearing: 'Victory!' It changed the world. The Great Patriotic War was over. Our once vast Soviet Motherland, though tortured and exhausted, liberated Europe. Everyone, including Western leaders, recognized the Soviet Union's decisive and leading role in the defeat of fascism. Everyone, including the people of Western nations, knew the scars that Hitler's executioners had left on our land," the head of state said.

Aleksandr Lukashenko recalled that over 30 million people died in the Soviet Union during the war years, millions were left orphaned, and 25 million lost their homes. A total of 2,000 cities were left in ruins, and more than 70,000 towns and villages were destroyed.

"Millions of lives were shattered by the will of a madman and his army gathered from across all of Europe," the President noted. "The criminal case into the genocide of the Belarusian people adds new figures to our losses. An additional 47 punitive operations we previously knew nothing about. Another 166 sites of destruction and burial. The map of burned villages now includes 13,000 locations, and 300 communities shared the tragic fate of Khatyn."

Belarus lost every third resident in that war. "For us, it is an irreparable loss and a terrible price paid to extinguish the furnaces of Auschwitz and Treblinka. To ensure that trains carrying slave labor and the riches of our native land would never again head from east to west. Back in 1945, every Soviet soldier passing through liberated Belarus knew he would go on, all the way to Berlin, along the path of a sacred struggle between good and evil," the Belarusian leader emphasized.