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The Story of

Belarus

1018 – 2022

Country in Eastern Europe

  1. Siege of Mahilow

    3 July 1941 – 26 July 1941

    The siege of Mogilev was a three-week encirclement of Mogilev undertaken by German troops, part of the Battle of Smolensk during World War II. After the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, German troops broke through Soviet lines. Mogilev was heavily fortified and bypassed by German tank forces.

  2. Battle of Lenino

    1943

    The Battle of Lenino was a tactical World War II engagement that took place on 12 and 13 October 1943, north of the village of Lenino in the Mogilev region of Byelorussia. The battle itself was a part of a larger Soviet Spas-Demensk offensive operation with the aims of clearing the eastern bank of the Dnieper River of German forces and piercing the Panther-Wotan line of defences.

  3. Khatyn massacre

    22 March 1943

    Khatyn (Belarusian: Хаты́нь, romanized: Khatyń, pronounced [xaˈtɨnʲ]; Russian: Хаты́нь, pronounced [xɐˈtɨnʲ]) was a village of 26 houses and 157 inhabitants in Belarus, in Lahoysk district, Minsk region, 50 km from Minsk. On 22 March 1943, almost its entire population was massacred by the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118, made up mostly of Ukrainian and other Soviet collaborators, assisted by the SS-Sonderbataillon Dirlewanger, in retaliation for an attack on German troops by Soviet partisans.

  4. Polotsk Offensive

    4 July 1944

    The Polotsk offensive (Russian: Полоцкая наступательная операция) was part of the second phase of the Belorussian strategic offensive of the Red Army in summer 1944, commonly known as Operation Bagration. The Soviet First Baltic Front successfully pursued the retreating remnants of the German Third Panzer Army back towards Polotsk, which was reached by 1 July.

  5. Hostages Convention

    17 December 1979

    The Hostages Convention (formally the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages) is a United Nations treaty by which states agree to prohibit and punish hostage taking. The treaty includes definitions of "hostage" and "hostage taking" and sets out the principle of aut dedere aut judicare: a party to the treaty must prosecute a hostage taker if no other state requests extradition for prosecution of the same crime.

  6. Belovezh Accords

    8 December 1991

    The Agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (officially), or unofficially the Minsk Agreement and best known as the Belovezha Accords, is the agreement declaring that the Soviet Union (USSR) had effectively ceased to exist and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place as an organization created by the same Union Republics. The documentation was signed at the state dacha near Viskuli in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, Belarus on 8 December 1991, by leaders of three of the four republics (except for the defunct Transcaucasian SFSR) which had…

  7. 1995 Belarusian referendum

    14 May 1995

    A four-question referendum was held in Belarus on 14 May 1995, alongside parliamentary elections. The four issues were the possibility of giving the Russian language equal status with Belarusian, whether new national symbols should be adopted, whether there should be economic integration with Russia and changes to the constitution that would allow early elections if Parliament systematically violated the constitution.

  8. 1996 Belarusian referendum

    24 November 1996

    A seven-question referendum was held in Belarus on 24 November 1996. Four questions were put forward by Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, on changing the date of the country's independence day, amending the constitution of Belarus, changing laws on the sale of land and the abolition of the death penalty.

  9. Nyamiha disaster

    30 May 1999

    A stampede at the Nyamiha metro station in Minsk, Belarus, on 30 May 1999, killed 53 people, mostly young women.

  10. 2004 Belarusian referendum

    17 October 2004

    A referendum on allowing President Lukashenko to stand in further elections was held in Belarus on 17 October 2004, alongside parliamentary elections. Lukashenko was nearing the end of his constitutionally-limited two terms, and the change would allow him to run for a third term.

  11. Jeans Revolution

    19 March 2006 – 25 March 2006

    The Jeans Revolution (Belarusian: Джынсавая рэвалюцыя, transliteration: Džynsavaja revalucyja, Russian: Джинсовая революция, romanized: Dzhinsovaya revolyutsiya) was a term used by Belarus' democratic opposition to describe its protests following the 2006 Belarusian presidential election.

  12. 2010 Belarusian protests

    19 December 2010

    The 2010 Belarusian protests were mass protest actions in Belarus against the results of the 2010 Belarusian presidential election, which took place on December 19, 2010 and were brutally dispersed. Between 10,000 and 60,000 people took part in the protest on October Square and Independence Square in Minsk.

  13. 2011 Minsk Metro bombing

    11 April 2011

    The 2011 Minsk Metro bombing took place on 11 April 2011 when 15 people were killed and 315 were injured when a bomb exploded within the Minsk Metro, Belarus. The explosion happened at the central Kastrychnitskaya station at 17:55 local time.

  14. 2011 Belarusian protests

    8 June 2011 – 12 October 2011

    The 2011 Belarusian protests were a series of peaceful protests by demonstrators in Belarus demanding the resignation of current Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, who had been the president of Belarus since 1994. Belarus is an authoritarian state, and in May 2011 presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov was sentenced to five years in prison for taking part in the 2010 presidential election.

  15. Minsk Protocol

    5 September 2014

    The Minsk agreements were a series of international agreements which sought to end the Donbas War fought between armed Russian separatist groups, backed by Russian regular forces, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. By August 2014, Ukraine had re-taken most of the territory seized by separatists.

  16. 2017 Belarusian protests

    17 February 2017 – 21 October 2017

    The 2017 Belarusian protests were a series of demonstrations and street protests against President Alexander Lukashenko that broke out in late February 2017. Protesters mobilized against a tax levied against the unemployed in Belarus.

  17. COVID-19 pandemic

    1 December 2019

    The global COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It spread to other parts of Asia and then worldwide in early 2020.

  18. COVID-19 pandemic in Europe

    24 January 2020

    The global COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Europe with its first confirmed case in Bordeaux, France, on 24 January 2020, and subsequently spread widely across the continent. By 17 March 2020, every country in Europe had confirmed a case, and all have reported at least one death, with the exception of Vatican City.

  19. 2020–2021 Belarusian protests

    24 May 2020 – 25 March 2021

    The 2020–2021 Belarusian protests were a series of mass political demonstrations and protests against the Belarusian government and President Alexander Lukashenko. The largest anti-government protests in the history of Belarus, the demonstrations began in the lead-up to and during the 2020 presidential election, in which Lukashenko sought his sixth term in office.

  20. full-scale Russo-Ukrainian war

    24 February 2022

    On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the existing war between the two countries that began when Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thousands of military casualties and tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties.