The electronic resource "Afghan War. No Right to Forget" is being created in the Vitebsk region.

10 January, Vitebsk /Alena Tikhonova - BELTA/. The internet resource "Afghan War. No Right to Forget," developed for the 25th anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and dedicated to the Afghan war veterans of the Vitebsk region, will be launched on 15 February on the website of the V.I. Lenin Vitebsk Regional Library, as reported to BELTA by the director of this state institution, Alexander Syomkin.

The electronic resource is a combined database with a local history focus and consists of eight sections: "Afghan War," "Military Formations of the Vitebsk Region in the Afghan War," "Internationalist Soldiers of the Vitebsk Region," "Book of Memory," "Memorial," "Vitebsk Regional Organisation of the Belarusian Union of Veterans of the War in Afghanistan," "Medical Rehabilitation of Afghan War Veterans," "Echoes of Distant Mountains."

As emphasized by Alexander Syomkin, the database currently contains 1,980 individuals, including 11 Heroes of the Soviet Union and 154 individuals who died or went missing in Afghanistan.

"Practically the entire library staff is working on data collection and processing. Librarians from the cities and districts of the region provide substantial assistance. They know the population of their regions and virtually all Afghan war veterans by name. Thanks to their responsible attitude towards their work, the official database has been supplemented with 10 names that were not on the military registration and enlistment office lists," noted Alexander Syomkin. He stressed that the internet resource is the result of joint work by the library network, the regional organisation of the Belarusian Union of Veterans of the War in Afghanistan, the Vitebsk City Museum of Internationalist Soldiers, military commissariats, and the 103rd Guards Airborne Brigade stationed in Vitebsk.

Full-text materials, photo documents, and letters from the collections of state institutions of the region, as well as personal archives of Afghan war veterans, were used in the preparation of the database.

"The new internet resource is an open program that will be further updated with new information about Afghan war veterans whose lives are somehow connected with the Vitebsk region," said Alexander Syomkin. -0-