Remembrance Day of Internationalist Soldiers

4,902 Afghan war veterans live in Minsk todayOn February 15, 1989, the last Soviet soldier crossed the Amu Darya border river bridge near Termez. The war in Afghanistan lasted 9 years 1 month and 18 days. More than 15 thousand of our soldiers died on foreign soil, 6 thousand died later from wounds and diseases, 311 people went missing. These were the biggest losses of the Soviet Army since the Great Patriotic War.

Time distances us from those events. There was no powerful power whose interests were defended in Afghanistan and thousands of Belarusians. However, the memory of the war still reverberates in the hearts of the mothers, fathers, widows, children of those guys who returned home on the “cargo-200”. in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, about 30,000 natives of Belarus served. Of these, 771 died. Today, 4,902 veterans of the war in Afghanistan live in Minsk alone, including 213 disabled people, as well as 97 families – parents and widows of deceased internationalist soldiers. This Memorial Day is for them.

It is also for those who fought in Spain in the thirties, Korea in the fifties, Vietnam, Angola, the Middle East.

This Memorial Day is for all of us.

Let us remember the dead and respect the survivors.