Independence Palace () is a palace in

Minsk Minsk (, ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach (Berezina), Svislach and the now subterranean Nyamiha, Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus and is the administra ...

. The palace is located on Pieramožcaŭ Avenue, near the "BelExpo" exhibition centre and the State Flag Square, not far from Victory Park. The purpose of the Palace of Independence is to host important and landmark events, meetings of foreign delegations, honouring of big families, and the admittance of children to pioneer organisations. On 7 May 2013

Alexander Lukashenko Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko (also transliterated as Alyaksandr Ryhoravich Lukashenka; born 30 August 1954) is a Belarusian politician who has been the first and only president of Belarus since the office's establishment in 1994, making hi ...

said:

Structure and layout

The total area of the Palace of Independence is around and has several hundred rooms within. The Palace of Independence is

oriented In mathematics, orientability is a property of some topological spaces such as real vector spaces, Euclidean spaces, surfaces, and more generally manifolds that allows a consistent definition of "clockwise" and "anticlockwise". A space is ori ...

History

The first official events in the palace were the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council at the level of heads of state, and the meeting of the Council of CIS heads of state. On 25 February 2014, Alexander Lukashenko awarded three-time champion of the

2014 Winter Olympics The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially called the XXII Olympic Winter Games () and commonly known as Sochi 2014 (), were an international winter multi-sport event that was held from 7 to 23 February 2014 in Sochi, Russia. Opening ro ...

Darya Domracheva Darya Uladzimirauna Domracheva (; born 3 August 1986) is a retired Belarusian biathlete and coach who competed in the Biathlon World Cup from 2006 to 2018. She won a gold medal in the 4×6 km relay and a silver medal in the mass start comp ...

the

Hero of Belarus Hero of Belarus (, Łacinka ''Hieroj Biełarusi''; ) is the highest title that can be bestowed on a citizen of Belarus. The title is awarded to those "who perform great deeds in the name of freedom, independence and prosperity of the Republic of ...

medal. The meeting on the

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between the presidents of

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

, Belarus,

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

and representatives of the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

was held at the Palace of Independence in Minsk on 26 August 2014. The palace was a focal point for anti-government protesters during the

2020-2021 Belarusian protests The symbol , known in Unicode as hyphen-minus, is the form of hyphen most commonly used in digital documents. On most keyboards, it is the only character that resembles a minus sign or a dash, so it is also used for these. The name ''hyphen-min ...

References

Notes {{reflist Buildings and structures in Minsk Government buildings completed in 2013 Presidential residences