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Thousands of people, including World War II veterans, attended Belarus’s Victory Day military parade despite the coronavirus epidemic.
The images of the parade showed crowded crowds as the country’s leader Alexander Lukashenko bragged about holding the only parade in the former Soviet Union to mark the defeat of Nazi Germany.
“In this crazy and disoriented world, there will be people who will condemn us for the time and place of this sacred act,” he said defiantly. “Do not rush to conclusions or condemn us, descendants of the Belarusian victory. We could not have acted differently. We had no choice. And even if we had one, we would have done the same.”
Lukashenko has publicly downplayed the epidemic, appearing at Orthodox Easter services and other public events and calling concerns about the outbreak a “psychosis.” Belarus is the only country in Europe that continues to host football matches during the crisis.
The country officially has 21,101 coronavirus cases and 121 deaths from the disease. Local activists have played an important role in crowdfunding the country’s response to the disease and in compensating for the shortage in local hospitals.
Russia and other countries canceled their May 9 parades, moving many of the celebrations online. While placing flowers in the eternal flame near the Kremlin on Monday, Putin promised to hold the parade and a memorial march called the Immortal Regiment by the end of the year. “We will have our main parade in Red Square and the national march of the Immortal Regiment: the march of our grateful memory and the inextricable, vital and alive communication between generations,” he said.
Lukashenko seemed to delight in Russia’s VE Day celebrations, saying that the dangers of the coronavirus epidemic paled in comparison to the difficulties he faced during World War II.
“That the parade in Minsk today is the only one in the post-Soviet space,” he said. “It will be held in honor of all the Soviet fighters who liberated the world from Nazism.”
Thousands of people go out in Minsk.
The coronavirus outbreak has created a gap between Russia and Belarus as the responses of the two countries to the epidemic diverge.
The Kremlin has publicly worried that Belarus’ lax approach to methods of social isolation “would bring a sharp increase in the number of people infected.”
Belarus this week revoked the accreditation of a Russian state television news team after a report on the increase in deaths from coronavirus in the country.
