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President Alexander Lukashenko, who ruled Belarus for more than a quarter of a century, said that people’s anxiety about the coronavirus pandemic was like psychosis.
The parade will be attended by more than 3,000 soldiers, 185 military units and 42 planes.
Tens of millions of people died in the Soviet Union during World War II, and victory over Nazi Germany remains an important source of national pride in both Russia and Belarus.
An even bigger parade was planned in Moscow this year, with the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. However, it had to be postponed indefinitely due to an outbreak of a coronavirus pandemic.
188,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported in Russia and 20,000 in Belarus, although the population is approximately 15 times smaller.
Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed concern that Belarus, Russia’s closest ally, was preparing to hold a military parade in the wake of the pandemic.
D. Peskov hoped that the number of infected people would not increase dramatically after that.
At the time, Lukashenko believed that canceling the parade would show a lack of respect for the dead.
“They perished for us, no matter how it sounded. We cannot simply take control and cancel the parade,” the President of Belarus told the country’s media this week.
Previously, he said that the economic crisis caused by the pandemic would have much sadder consequences than the coronavirus.
“More people will die from unemployment and hunger than from coronaviruses,” Lukashenko said in March.
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