Tanks, children, and golden buttons: How Lukashenka turned May 9 into a cult

In 2025, Belarus celebrated the 80th anniversary of Victory on a scale not seen in a long time. The celebration included military parades, tanks, airplanes, fireworks, and other strange forms of celebration and obsequiousness for "dear guests" and a few surviving veterans, who were "congratulated" in such a way that it would have been better not to do so at all. All of this took place amid a general decline and at the expense of the budget.