MINSK, 9 May (BelTA) – Belarus has organized a parade to the glory of those, who did not waver and who broke the might of Hitler’s Germany. Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko made the statement in his speech at the army parade held in Minsk on 9 May on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Soviet nation’s Victory in the Great Patriotic War, BelTA has learned.
Aleksandr Lukashenko said: “It is the Victory, today’s Victory that is celebrated by the Republic of Belarus, by brotherly Russia, by our friends and allies, all the people of good will. It is great and well-deserved. It is a day of the Great Victory.”
The president stressed that this victory had been secured by valiant warriors: soldiers of the Red Army, partisans, underground resistance fighters, homefront workers, and the entire Soviet nation – a nation that freed the world from Nazism.
“Sky was lit with the first festive salutes on 9 May 1945. A peaceful life began, as part of which we have not tired of counting years and days of events of the Great Patriotic War. For 80 years we’ve been celebrating the Victory, recalling the heroes and bowing our heads to the fallen. We are conducting a parade to the glory of those, who didn’t waver and who fought courageously, slowing down the progress of the death machine bent on razing cities, villages, destinies and lives. We honor the memory of the heroes, who broke the military might of Hitler’s Germany, which had gathered millions of European Nazis under its banners,” Aleksandr Lukashenko stated.
“Our nation demonstrated a never-before-seen will to win. No one in Europe had managed to resist the Wehrmacht the way our nation, our state – the Soviet Union – did it. The well-equipped and tactically proven army of fascists stumbled upon the Soviet border. It stuck for long years on approaches to Moscow. In the first days in Belarus alone Hitler’s army lost more soldiers and officers than over the two years of marching across the entire Europe,” the head of state said.
The president recalled that about 1.3 million Belarus’ natives had fought in the ranks of the Red Army. Nearly 500 became Heroes of the Soviet Union. About 1 million partisans fought behind enemy lines. Over 800,000 partisans and underground resistance fighters operated in the republic. For a month as many as 16 partisan brigades successfully resisted Wehrmacht and SS units that had been redeployed from the frontline in overwhelming force and had been assisted by traitors and collaborationists from Latvia, Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus.
“Over the years of the occupation our land fostered a nationwide resistance movement. No other country in the world had such a massive, multiethnic movement of partisans and underground resistance fighters,” Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed. “Representatives of over 70 nations and ethnicities fought like brothers in the same ranks with us. It was a genuine second front, fighting at which had a massive effect and decided the fate of the largest battles of the Great Patriotic War.”
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