The Victory Relay concluded in Belarus – at the Mound of Friendship, our border guards handed it over to their Russian colleagues

The Belarusian border guards today completed their leg of the relay race, which is taking place along the external borders of the CIS countries in honor of the 75th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. The symbol of the Victory Relay, a cup in the form of a border post, was handed over by the Deputy Chairman of the State Border Committee of Belarus, Major General Igor Pechen, to the First Deputy Head of the Border Directorate of the FSB of Russia for the Pskov Region, Colonel Stanislav Akatov. 

The meeting took place in the Verkhnedvinsk district at the Mound of Friendship, where the borders of Belarus, Russia, and Latvia converge. 

Major General Igor Pechen spoke about the journey the Victory Relay had made over two weeks: 

— The relay group visited settlements in the Brest, Gomel, Grodno, and Vitebsk regions, following the state border with Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. Rallies, concerts, lessons of courage in schools, exhibitions of modern weapons, and meetings with veterans and youth were held at the named outposts and military monuments in the border areas. Each such event helps us preserve the historical truth about the causes, course, and outcomes of the Great Patriotic War.

After a minute of silence, flowers were laid at the Belarusian monument to the Komsomol heroes of the village of Proshki, after which the meeting participants moved to the Russian side to the monument to Hero of the Soviet Union Maria Pynko.

The chairman of the Vitebsk Regional Council of Deputies, Vladimir Terentyev, drew attention to the symbolic nature of the meeting place for the border guards:

— In early July this year, the meeting of veterans of the Great Patriotic War will be held here for the 61st time, and in just two weeks the youth camp "Be-LА-Rus" will start. Events that differ in format and content are united by one thing – the memory of the Great Victory. The transfer of the Victory Relay in this place has already become a good tradition on anniversary dates. I want to say that five years ago, there were 2611 veterans and participants of the war living in the Vitebsk region, today there are 727 people left. It is very important for them to know that the memory of that war is alive and will live on. It depends on us.

The Victory Relay started on February 5 simultaneously in Belarusian Brest and Russian Murmansk. In our country, the event began at the Brest Fortress, and in the capital of the Arctic, the starting point was the monument "Arctic Border Guards".

The Russian, like the Belarusian, relay will pass through checkpoints, cities, and villages of the border regions, to finish on May 28, Border Guard Day, in Moscow. The Memory Marathon will visit nine countries. The relay symbol will be transported and carried through all heroic places, places of feat of border guards in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan. The total route length is over 60 thousand kilometers. The organizer of the Victory Relay is the Council of Commanders of the Border Troops of the CIS countries.