The last parade is coming: The Belarusian army does not surrender to the coronavirus
The first case of coronavirus infection in a military personnel was officially confirmed by the Ministry of Defense of Belarus. This was reported by the Tut.by portal, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
According to the official representative of the Belarusian Ministry of Defense Natalya Gavrusik, a serviceman from the training center in Pechi was hospitalized with pneumonia. He tested positive for coronavirus. His colleagues were isolated in a tent city at the training ground.
The training center in Pechi is the largest in Belarus. And although, according to the Ministry of Defense, the sick soldier is not involved in the May 9 parade, this does not apply to all 4,5 thousand people in “training.” Some of them are regularly taken to Minsk for rehearsals in the center of the capital.
Belarus is the only country that has not yet refused to hold mass events on Victory Day. Judging by the fact that President Alexander Lukashenko also announced a national cleanup day for April 25 yesterday, he will definitely not refuse the parade.
Belarusian military expert Yegor Lebedok believes that holding the parade is a violation of the internal service regulations, which prohibits the deployment of military personnel “in populated areas that are unfavorable in sanitary and epidemiological terms.”
“To hold the parade, units from other localities in Belarus were temporarily transferred to Minsk, while Minsk has the maximum number of people infected with coronavirus,” Lebedok wrote in his Telegram channel.
He doubts that Lukashenko will follow the example of Russian President Vladimir Putin and postpone the parade to a later time.
“It was easy for Putin to do this, since in the Russian Federation the epidemic was not initially questioned and appropriate measures were taken, within the framework of which the postponement of the parade was logical and did not cause political damage to the authorities. At the same time, Lukashenko does not consider COVID-19 a serious threat and constantly demonstrates this. Therefore, postponing the parade under the pretext of preventing infection is a blow to Lukashenko’s reputation in the pre-election year, which he can hardly afford (he “cannot be wrong”),” Lebedok wrote.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.