Opinions & Interviews

“We know that the opening of the second front, and the actions of the allied nations of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and other countries have played a role. But it was the Soviet army, the Soviet people who bore the brunt of the war during WWII. And it is not that we should not give the victory away to someone. The Victory can be shared. But we need to understand who achieved the Victory. We have gathered in Minsk today. Belarus sacrificed hundreds of thousands of people. The nation showed it wanted to remain in the history, to protect its future,” Mikhail Shvydkoy noted.

Mikhail Shvydkoy added that the war was called patriotic precisely for this reason. “People understood that it was not about the victory of this or that ideology. It was the victory of the people who cared about their historic future. The Nazis wanted to eliminate not only the Gypsies and Jews but the Slavic nations as well. They wanted to exterminate representatives of all peoples in the Soviet Union they considered subhuman,” he noted. Mikhail Shvydkoy believes that there will be no future without memory of the past.

According to him, it is important that today's forum is attended by war veterans and younger generation.

The Great Victory Through Unity forum is running in Minsk on 27-29 April. It has been organized by the Belarusian non-governmental association of veterans, the CIS Interstate Fund for Humanitarian Cooperation, the political science center North-South (Russia), Eurasian Research Institute (Russia), and the House of Press (Belarus, with the support of the Belarusian Information Ministry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ministries of defense, the interior and culture, the Minsk City Hall and the Minsk Oblast Executive Committee.