Lukashenko addresses Belarusians on 80th anniversary of Khatyn tragedy

“On this tragic day – 22 March - we recall the residents of the village of Khatyn, thousands of other villages and cities that were brutally destroyed by the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. That war deviously broke into our home and took away every third Belarusian,” the head of state noted. “80 years ago, on a sunny spring day Nazi punitive brigades descended on the village to carry out the bloody massacre of innocent civilians,” the message reads.

Aleksandr Lukashenko noted that every corner of Belarus has a place that shared the fate of Khatyn. “It hurts when you think how many people were not born, how many children did not grow up, how many lives were ended because of crazy ideas, blind hatred and bloodthirsty cruelty,” the president stressed.

“Years on, bitterness and anger are still there. Especially today, when the plague of Nazism has spread among mercenaries, traitors and criminals and has approached our border. Belarusians can confront them with the spirit of popular resistance. Its symbol is the unconquered man, who, having risen alive from the fire, holding the body of his dead son in his arms, carries a message of eternal condemnation to fascism through time,” the message reads.

“Our nation owes a debt to its fallen: to expose the perpetrators of the mass genocide, to carefully preserve the memory of those terrible events and prevent such things from happening again in our sacred land,” the president emphasized. “Blessed memory to all the dead! Eternal glory to their immortal feat in the name of peace for future generations!”