V-Day: target of political posturing


From year to year Aliaksandr Lukashenka mentions thunder of cannon or death camps in his speeches devoted to annual Victory Day celebration. But after an ”obligatory” part comes to an end, the President tries to draw the audience’s attention to the aspects which hardly have any relation to the commemorative date or veterans.

Enemies in the West

Making his speeches Lukashenka repeatedly remembered “external and domestic threats”, e.g. “attempts to impose a new democratic order on us”, “blackmailing on the part of the West”, “applying new technologies of information wars and network revolutions, economic sanctions, political activities of local fifth columns”.

This year there have been only “sanctions” and “throwing mud”. But at the same time, Lukashenka has evaded the issue of the dialogue with the EU. Moreover, according to the head of state, “Belarus remains at a gun point of the undeclared cold war”.

Friends in the East

In Lukashenka’s speeches Russia regularly figures as the equipoise of “the western enemies”. On the 2012 Victory Day the President stated that “Belarus cooperates with its CSTO partners and guards the borders of the country together with fraternal Russia”.

Today’s message is not dissimilar to the previous one: “the main direction in the cooperation in the military field is a close interaction with fraternal Russia”. According to Lukashenka, Belarus should enhance the strength of its air defense: “New systems and airplanes are purely defensive weapon, and we will have as much units as we need to ensure the national security”.

Lukashenka as a main defender of Victory Day

There are people who have been trying to revise the history of the Great Patriotic War, downgrade the role of Soviet people’s fight, denigrate the partisan movement, rehabilitate fascists and especially their accomplices, he said. “Our holy mission is to preserve the truth about the war,” Lukashenka stressed. It is interesting that the President did not touch the issue of reviewing history in his previous speeches.

Belsat

www.belsat.eu/en

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