Belarus to gather thousands for WWII Victory Day parade amid pandemic

Belarus was to gather thousands of people for a parade in the capital, Minsk, on Saturday, to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, despite the country’s coronavirus caseload having sharply risen in recent weeks.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has led the former Soviet republic in Eastern Europe for more than a quarter-century, tolerating little dissent, has dismissed concerns over the coronavirus pandemic as a “psychosis.”

The parade was to include more than 3,000 members of the armed forces, 185 military vehicles and 42 aircraft, state news agency BelTA reported.

The Soviet Union suffered tens of millions of casualties during the war, the most of the Allied forces, and the victory over Nazi Germany remains a substantial source of national pride in Belarus and neighbouring Russia.

Moscow had planned to hold a even grander parade, counting on attendance by several world leaders including France’s Emmanuel Macron and China’s Xi Jinping, but indefinitely postponed it due to a sharp rise in coronavirus cases.

Russia has identified nearly 188,000 coronavirus cases, while Belarus, whose population is less than a 10th that of Russia’s, has identified more than 20,000, according to the officially published statistics.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, expressed concern earlier this week that Belarus, Russia’s closest ally, was planning to hold the parade amid the pandemic.

He expressed hope that the parade would “not lead to some kind of explosive increase in the number of infected,” according to comments carried by the Russian news agency Interfax.

Lukashenko has suggested that it would be disrespectful to cancel the parade because it honours those who gave their lives during the war.

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“They died for us, no matter how bad it sounds,” he said this week in comments carried by state media. “We can’t just cancel the parade.”

Lukashenko previously suggested that the economic downturn caused by the pandemic would be worse than the disease itself.

“People will die more from unemployment and hunger than from the coronavirus,” Lukashenko said in late March, according to comments published by his office. (dpa)