Ambassador Attends Event Marking 85th Anniversary of the Siege of Leningrad

On September 8, 2026, Ambassador of Belarus to Israel Yury Yaroshevich took part in a commemorative event marking the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Siege of Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War.

The event began in Jerusalem at the “Candle of Memory” memorial, where a wreath-laying ceremony was held in honor of the heroic defenders and residents of besieged Leningrad.

The commemorative ceremony then continued at the Chaim Herzog Museum of the Jewish Soldier in World War II in Latrun, where the official part of the event took place.

Among those attending were the Ambassadors of Belarus and Russia, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Evgeny Sova, Museum Director Brigadier General Tzvika Kan-Tor, Chairman of the All-Israel Association of Refugees and Holocaust Survivors Yehuda Davidov, as well as representatives of Jewish and veterans’ organizations.

The guest of honor was Abram Ilyich Gutkovich, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War and a participant in Operation Bagration and the liberation of Vitebsk and Grodno, who went on to reach Berlin with the Red Army.

In his remarks, Ambassador Yury Yaroshevich stressed that the memory of the Siege of Leningrad holds particular significance for Belarus as well. During the Great Patriotic War, the Belarusian people also endured an immense tragedy marked by occupation, the mass extermination of civilians, and the destruction of cities and villages.

Speaking about the human dimension of the siege, the Ambassador read passages from the memoirs of writer Daniil Granin about his work with Belarusian writer Ales Adamovich on The Blockade Book. The work was based on hundreds of interviews and firsthand testimonies of Leningrad residents who preserved a living memory of those terrible events.

As the Ambassador noted, it is through these personal testimonies that the courage, dignity, intelligence and humanity of those who survived the siege emerge with particular force, alongside the terrible truth about hunger, suffering and the enormous human losses.

Yury Yaroshevich emphasized that the history of the Siege of Leningrad and the wartime tragedy of Belarus are inseparably linked by a shared memory of the war and the Victory. The people of Leningrad and Belarus were united by the experience of immense hardship, mass loss of life, and the struggle for survival and freedom.

In this context, the head of the diplomatic mission recalled the words of President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko on the heroism of the people of Leningrad and the shared historical memory of the nations that bore the main burden of the Great Patriotic War.

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