"We will preserve our civilization." Lukashenko makes emotional speech at requiem concert in St. Petersburg

At a performance-concert in St. Petersburg dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi blockade, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko spoke out about dangerous tendencies in assessing the outcome of the Great Patriotic War, BelTA reports.

Speaking before the concert, the President made a small deviation from the prepared theses. As a result, the entire Gazprom Arena, where the concert was held, gave the Belarusian leader's emotional statement a standing ovation.

Alexander Lukashenko said that, driving up with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to the venue of the concert, he discussed with him how the results of the Great Patriotic War are assessed today.

"And he named one terrible idea of our vile young people who have not seen the war, and have not seen serious grief. They say: "It was not necessary to defend Leningrad. We should have left it behind, and a huge number of lives, more than a million, would have been saved. A dangerous trend. They, bastards, are trying to look at past from the present day," the head of state emphasized.

According to this logic, he noted, if it was not necessary to defend Leningrad, then it was not necessary to defend Moscow, and in general it was not necessary to defend.

"I agree with the President of Russia who says, 'We would have lost our civilization and would not be living on this earth today if we had not fought for every scrap of land'." And their logic is: yes we don't have to resist, we don't have to fight. They are sharpening their swords today on our borders to come to us. They are coming to us again to make us "better". And where will we be? That is the big question we are trying to answer today. We are answering it and we will answer it, be assured of that. And let the memory of those who have left us inspire us to create for the future of our peoples, for the sake of peace. We will preserve our civilization, you can be sure of that," concluded Alexander Lukashenko.