Sergeyenko with Belarus President Administration staff laid flowers at Tank-Liberator Monument
Igor Sergeyenko, the Head of the Belarus President Administration, and employees of the President Administration laid flowers today at the Tank-Liberator Monument in Minsk, honoring the memory of those killed during the Great Patriotic War on the eve of the 78th anniversary of Great Victory
After the flower-laying ceremony, Igor Sergeyenko said in a conversation with reporters, “What is happening with our neighbours (I’m referring to Poland, the Baltic States, Ukraine, where the monuments to the heroes who gave their lives for the liberation of Europe and these countries from the brown fascist plague are being demolished) can only be called blasphemy. 600 thousand Red Army soldiers, officers and generals gave their lives for Poland. This will never happen to us, I’m sure of it. This T-34 tank, which stands in the centre of Minsk and was one of the first to break into the then-occupied city on July 3rd, 1944, is a symbol both for the post-war period and for many years to come. This monument embodies the feat of all the soldiers who liberated Belarus and Minsk, a monument to the tank heroes of the 2nd Guards Tatsinsky Tank Corps under the command of General Burdeiny. There is a street named after him in Minsk. It was this general, an honorary citizen of the city of Minsk, who lit the Eternal Flame at the monument on Victory Square in 1961. These are all pages of our history, alongside the fact that after the liberation of Minsk, fifty-two formations and units were awarded the title of Minsk. Many of them still function as part of the Russian Armed Forces.”
The Head of the President Administration stressed, “These are all the pages of our military history that we must remember, know, discover, study. This memory is in the names of streets, and in museum expositions, in works of culture and art, in monuments. This is our memory, this is our history, which must be valued and cherished. And we treat it this way – as the most sacred, the most valuable.”One of the most famous Minsk monuments, the legendary ‘thirty-four’ appeared at the House of Officers in 1952. Initially, the tank was conceived as a monument to all tankmen who participated in the Great Patriotic War. In 1970s, the monument was restored, becoming a part of the front-line history of the Belarusian capital.
After the laying ceremony, the Head of the Belarus President Administration visited the State Museum of the History of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus. Opened in the 1970s as a museum of the Red Banner Belarusian Military District, after the collapse of the USSR, it moved to the garrison house of officers in Uruchie. In 2022, Belarus’ Defence Minister decided to move it to the Central House of Officers and supplement it with new exhibits. Now there are more than 30,000 of them in the museum.
Each hall of the museum is equipped with a screen and touchscreens, where thematic quizzes have been added for schoolchildren. To help teachers and class teachers, the museum staff created a pedagogical diary – a kind of excursion plan, which indicates the route, main points, dates and events that young people should pay attention to.
In February 2023, during the opening ceremony, the medal of the Hero of Belarus Nikita Kukonenko was handed over to the State Museum of the History of the Armed Forces of Belarus, which is now carefully stored here.
photos: www.belta.by
