Eastern Front

President Lukashenko's approach to Covid-19 is dangerously mistaken. But within living memory, although not for much longer, Belarus lost one third of its total population in the Great Patriotic War.

Just try and imagine that. One out of every three people you know. Gone. But they won. So, on the last major anniversary of that victory that any number of its veterans might be able to attend, they have damn well done it in style.

Before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin had offered to send one million troops to defend the borders of Europe. Britain, France and Poland refused. We know what happened next.

But once the USSR was in the War, then it really was in it. Britain and the United States lost 400,000 each. The Soviet Union lost 27 million. Over 80 per cent of German casualties occurred on the Eastern Front, and of course the Red Army was the first to enter Berlin.