70th anniversary of the Great Victory

The project kicked off from the Eternal Flame on the Alley of Heroes in Volgograd on 20 March. The first lilac bushes were planted in Sevastopol and Kerch in early April. Young plants were then delivered to other cities-heroes such as Novorossiysk, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Murmansk, Volgograd, Tula, Smolensk. Lilac alleys in Belarus will be laid out in Minsk and Brest. About 400 lilac bushes will be planted in the Loshitsa and Pobeda park complexes in Minsk on 1 and 5 May. The Lilac of the Victory alley will be officially opened in the Brest Fortress on 7 May.

Grigory Klumov noted that unique varieties of lilac are planted in the cities-heroes. Among them is Great Victory, Valentina Grizodubova, Captain Gastello, Marshal Zhukov, Marshal Vasilevsky, for Brest Defenders, Partisan, Alexei Maresyev. They were developed by well-known Soviet plant breeder Leonid Kolesnikov.

A huge contribution to the development of biology in Belarus has been made by Vladimir Reshetnikov, the member of the National Academy of Sciences, head of the Department of Biochemsitry and Biotechnology of Plants of the Central Botanic Garden, Co-Chair of the Council of the Botanic Gardens of Russia and Belarus. He is one of the initiators and organizers of the Lilac of the Victory project.