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Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko took part in the patriotic forum “We are Belarusians!“ dedicated to the Day of People’s Unity in Minsk on 17 September. Aleksandr Lukashenko added that time itself, the time of the global redivision of the world, returned the date of 17 September to the calendar of public holidays. The symbol of the unity of the Belarusian people was 1939 - the year when the Belarusian lands reunited into a single state. “We, Belarusians, do not need to be told how important it is to live in peace and harmony, to be a single nation. Life has taught us. Our compatriots born under the Polish occupation can tell a lot. Those who know about the danger of losing their homeland and breaking away from their families. They know what it means to live in their native land, but to be an outcast in the eyes of privileged fellow citizens for many decades. They understand why on 17 September the country celebrated the day of liberation of the working people of Western Belarus from the Polish oppression, occupation. No matter the name of the holiday, it objectively reflects the essence of this holiday,“ the head of state said. Aleksandr Lukashenko addressed the peoples of the neighboring countries at the forum. “We are not hatching plans to interfere in your life. We wish you only well, happiness and peace! But peace is so fragile that any careless movement can lead to grave irreparable consequences. I would not like our lands to once again become a theater of military operations or millions of our citizens killed again... As it has always been in history,“ the head of state said. “Today vultures are circling over us, as it was in the run-up to the Great Patriotic War. They are circling around the Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian lands. They are ready to make an alliance with the devil himself, if only to take more space on the political map of the world... ‘od morza do morza’,“ the head of state said. “They would like to erase the facts of political shame and moral decline of their predecessors. They themselves would like to forget how Poland was one of the first to recognize the Nazi Reich. This is the fact. It signed a non-aggression pact with it and a secret agreement on the division of Czechoslovakia. They would like to forget how, having received part of someone else's territory, they were crushed within a short time by their former ally. “On 17 September, the day when the Red Army began the momentous liberation campaign, we celebrate one of the most important state holidays – People’s Unity Day. Unity tempered in a selfless struggle for our national dignity. We are proud of the indomitable will of those who did not submit to the anti-human regime. Those who went underground, waged a guerrilla liberation war, resisted the policy of forced assimilation. If there had not been such a large-scale nationwide resistance, there would have been no reunification of the Belarusian people in 1939 into a single state. And there would be no modern sovereign Belarus if it were not for the conditions created in the family of Soviet peoples. We know that. We remember this,“ the head of state said “Both then and today, unity has been essential for the preservation of our state and its future. This is a matter of our survival as a nation,“ the Belarusian leader stressed. According to Aleksandr Lukashenko, 17 September is one of the three milestone dates in Belarus, along with 9 May and 3 July which provide an opportunity to take a look into the past in order to hold the present firmly in your hands and protect the future. “No matter what internal political processes take place in our neighboring states, the Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Ukrainians should understand: we are the most peaceful nation on the planet. We are not rattling nuclear weapons or some units such as Wagner and we are not threatening anyone,“ the Belarusian leader said. “Addressing the Belarusians today, as President and Commander-in-Chief, I want to assure you: we do not want war and we will not go to war. There will be no war on the territory of Belarus in modern conditions. Because it is impossible,“ the head of state said. “If, God forbid, anything happens, we will all become the Brest Fortress. We will defend our land, which belongs to our children, to the last soldier, to the last Belarusian man,” the Belarusian leader stressed. “We will do this in the name of peace in our native land, in the name of Belarus, which we are building on the foundation of victories, achievements, experience and memory of our heroic ancestors.“ Aleksandr Lukashenko called on citizens of Belarus to live in peace, not to worry, to raise children, to be happy and cherish their native land.
