Kopyl regional executive committee

Speaker of the Federation Council of Russia's Federal Assembly Valentina Matviyenko handed over a capsule with the soil from the fields of sanguinary battles near Rzhev to the Memorial Church of All Saints in Minsk during her visit to Minsk, BelTA has learned.

The capsule contains the soil from two places: from the “height-200”, for which the battles lasted for several months, and from the mass grave near the village of Kokoshkino where thousands of unknown soldiers were buried. The capsule handover ceremony is timed to coincide with the international action of remembrance “To the Glory of the Common Victory!

The event was attended by MPs, representatives of the diplomatic corps and the Belarusian Orthodox Church. After the ceremony, Valentina Matviyenko talked to the Leningrad siege survivors who settled in Minsk. They said that they are satisfied with life in Belarus, actively participate in various events, often visit schools, meet with young people.

After the ceremony Metropolitan of Minsk and Zaslavl Pavel gave Valentina Matviyenko an icon depicting Saint Euphrosyne of Polotsk.

A capsule with soil from the battlefield near Rzhev was placed into the crypt of the All Saints Church in Minsk. It was the 78th capsule of this kind. The crypt has 504 niches grouped into sectors. The soil from the Rzhev battlefield was placed next to the soil taken from other major battlefields of the Great Patriotic War, including the Battle of Kursk, Partisan Operation Breakthrough in Vitebsk Oblast, Vyazma Operation. “Rzhev is an important milestone in the history of the Great Patriotic War. It is the place of one of the deadliest fights; the land near Rzhev is soaked with blood, this place is sacred for us. The fact that it will be kept in the crypt of the All Saints Church in Minsk is a great honor,” Director of the Belarusian Cultural Center of Spiritual Revival Aleksandr Gostev said.

According to him, a memorial museum will open in the All Saints Church within the framework of the campaign "To the Glory of the Common Victory!" ahead of 9 May. Its exposition will illustrate major battles in which the Belarusians took part in: from the battle on the Nemiga River to the Afghan war. The museum will make its visitors familiar with the history behind every capsule in the crypt with the help of photos, valuable historical artifacts, and findings handed over to the church by its parishioners.

“We do not keep count of the capsules, we keep count of the events behind these capsules, because each of them is a stage of the past. It is a new method of preserving the memory in order to be able to fully answer questions of future generations about our history, as veterans leave us one by one,” Archpriest

A detailed map of Minsk and Minsk Oblast has been published on the georesource of remote Earth probing data, BelTA learned from the website of Belarus' State Property Committee.

The Belarusian aerial phototopography enterprise BelPSHAGI took ortho-photos of Minsk and adjacent areas, including the Sokol suburb and the Minsk National Airport district in September 2019 with a view to creating the land information system of Minsk.

The system, which was commissioned by the State Property Committee, is designed to improve the efficiency of land management, accounting and control in Minsk.

The total area of the footage is approximately 1,000km2. The spatial resolution of photos is 15 centimeters in one pixel.

At a committee meeting devoted to summing up the results of 2019 and plans for 2020 in Dzerzhinsk, the chairman of the committee on labor, employment and social protection of Minsk Oblast Executive Committee Tamara Krasovskaya said that the nominal average monthly salary in the region for 2019 amounted to 1098 rubles, an increase to the level 2018 - 13.7%.

Representatives of such spheres as mining earned 1,807.8 rubles, information and communications - 1,945.4 rubles. Education workers were charged 729.9 rubles, institutions of creativity, entertainment and leisure, sports - 756.5 rubles. State employees received 816 rubles, agricultural workers - 835.9 rubles.

Also in the region they control both the increase in salaries and the timeliness of payments. The number of salary debtors is also decreasing. In 2019, the region accounted for only 5.9% of the total number of debtor organizations. In 12 districts out of 23, wage arrears were not allowed.

The plans for the current year include ensuring further salary growth, monitoring problem organizations, and narrowing the wage gap between the public sector and the general level in Belarus.

Minsk will host the UEFA Congress for the first time in 2021. This decision has been made at the UEFA Executive Committee meeting in Amsterdam, BelTA has learned.

The committee also approved the rules of European club competitions for upcoming seasons.

On 3 March Amsterdam will host the 44th Ordinary UEFA Congress with the participation of the heads of 55 national member associations. Belarus will be represented by President of the Belarusian Football Federation Vladimir Bazanov, his first deputy Yuri Vergeichik and Secretary General Sergei Zhardetsky.

The UEFA Congress is UEFA's supreme executive body, dealing with a variety of matters including election of the UEFA President and the UEFA Executive Committee members. It is held every year in one of the member states.

The CIS Executive Committee will host a meeting of the working group of the CIS Council for Cooperation in Education in Minsk on 2 March. The participants will finalize the draft agreement of cooperation in accreditation of educational organizations and institutions of the CIS states, BelTA has learned from the CIS press service.

The Science and Higher Education Ministry of Russia and the CIS Council of the Interparliamentary Assembly proposed to draft the agreement in April 2017.

The CIS Commission on Quality Assurance of Education was set up to conduct independent evaluation of the quality of the education and public accreditation and prepare the draft agreement. The commission is run by the Russian National Accreditation Agency. The commission prepared the draft agreement and sent it to the CIS Executive Committee in January 2020. The vommission members from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russian and Tajikistan participated in the drafting process.

The aim of state accreditation of the educational activities is to confirm its correspondence to the national standards applied in the CIS educational organizations and institutions. The joint accreditation body will be set up to take agreed decisions on state accreditation of the CIS educational organizations and institutions or to decline state accreditation following the monitoring and analysis of the educational programs with regard to each educational level of every profession.

The CIS Executive Committee will host a meeting of the working group of the CIS Council for Cooperation in Education in Minsk on 2 March. The participants will finalize the draft agreement of cooperation in accreditation of educational organizations and institutions of the CIS states, BelTA has learned from the CIS press service.

The Science and Higher Education Ministry of Russia and the CIS Council of the Interparliamentary Assembly proposed to draft the agreement in April 2017.

The CIS Commission on Quality Assurance of Education was set up to conduct independent evaluation of the quality of the education and public accreditation and prepare the draft agreement. The commission is run by the Russian National Accreditation Agency. The commission prepared the draft agreement and sent it to the CIS Executive Committee in January 2020. The vommission members from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russian and Tajikistan participated in the drafting process.

The aim of state accreditation of the educational activities is to confirm its correspondence to the national standards applied in the CIS educational organizations and institutions. The joint accreditation body will be set up to take agreed decisions on state accreditation of the CIS educational organizations and institutions or to decline state accreditation following the monitoring and analysis of the educational programs with regard to each educational level of every profession.

We have established four quarantine facilities at the airport to collect biomaterials of arriving passengers. Medical workers are deployed there, Spokeswoman for the Minsk National Airport Romina Samatkhanova told BelTA as she spoke about the measures applied in the airport to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

“The air terminal complex is equipped with disinfectors. We regularly conduct cleaning and disinfection activities. All personnel involved in servicing passengers and aircraft are equipped with personal protective equipment,” Romina Samatkhanova said.

As it has been reported, Belarus confirmed first case of coronavirus. The National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology informed that one of the tests for coronavirus came back positive on 27 February. The infected person is a student from Iran who arrived in Belarus on a flight from Baku on 22 February. The patient and the people who contacted with him were taken off to Minsk Hospital of Infectious Diseases. The young man is in satisfactory condition.

The exhibition “Eryk Lipinski - Caricature” from the holdings of the Warsaw Museum of Caricature will open in the University of Culture art gallery on 4 March, the organizers told BelTA.

The exhibition organized together with the Polish Institute in Minsk will put on display all forms of the artist's works: caricature, movie posters, magazine covers. Director of the Museum of Caricature Elzbieta Laskowska will visit the gallery. The exhibition will be on view till 18 March.

Eryk Lipinski and Polish publicist and satirist Zbigniew Mitzner founded the satirical magazine Szpilki in 1935. Eryk Lipinski was its editor for several years. During World War II he cooperated with the Polish Resistance movement.

The artist founded the Museum of Caricature in Warsaw in 1978 and was its director until his death. His own collection became the cornerstone of the museum holdings. Eryk Lipinski suggested setting up the Association of Polish Cartoonists and the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Monuments in Poland. He was awarded the Gold Cross for merit in art, and received the title of the Righteous Among the Nations in 1991.

The IBU Open European Championships will kick off in the Raubichi Olympic Center near Minsk on 26 February, BelTA has learned.

The solemn opening ceremony is scheduled for 11:00. The championships will begin at 13:00 with the Men Super Sprint Qualification. Belarus will be represented by Viktar Kryuko, Raman Yaliotnau, Anton Smolski, Mikita Labastau, Sergei Bocharnikov, and Maksim Varabei. The women's event will feature Belarusian biathletes Iryna Kryuko, Hanna Sola, Dzinara Alimbekava, Elena Kruchinkina, Irina Kruchinkina, Adelina Sabitava.

All in all, taking part in the event will be 40 teams, 157 men and 140 women.

On 27 February biathletes will compete in the Single Mixed Relay (W+M) and 4x6 Mixed Relay. The competition will wrap up with the Men's and Women's Pursuit Competitions on 1 March.

The 2020 IBU Open European Biathlon Championships was relocated from Estonia's Otepaa to Raubichi due to the warm weather in Estonia. The Belarusian Sports and Tourism Ministry and representatives of the Raubichi sports center expressed their readiness to host the competitions.

Minsk has made it to the top three most manly cities of the CIS, BelTA learned from the analytics agency TurStat.

In addition to Minsk, the top ten includes Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Chelyabinsk, Saint Petersburg, Kazan, Ufa and Nur-Sultan.

“Moscow gained 14% of the votes as the most manly city in Russia and the CIS, Yekaterinburg 11%, Minsk 10%, Rostov-on-Don 9%, Krasnodar 8%, Chelyabinsk 6%, Saint Petersburg 5%, Kazan and Ufa 4%, Nur-Sultan 3%,” the agency said.

The ranking is based on an online survey of more than 5,000 users of the website on the topic of “Which CIS city has the best and most courageous men?” (the survey was held in late February).