YEREVAN. – By defending Brest and Minsk, Armenian soldiers were also defending Yerevan and entire Armenia from fascism.

Vice President of the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia, Eduard Sharmazanov, on Tuesday stated the above-said while visiting the Brest Fortress in Brest, Belarus, the NA informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

At the fortress, members of the visiting Armenian parliamentary delegation placed flowers in the memory of the Soviet soldiers who fell while defending the Brest Fortress.

In Brest, the delegation also paid a visit to the Armenian cross-stone devoted to the heroic Armenian soldiers, and paid tribute to them.

“From the first days of the [Great] Patriotic War [during World War II], tens of thousands of Armenian soldiers left for the battlefield, protecting our shared homeland from fascism,” Sharmazanov said, in particular. “More than 300 thousand of the 600 thousand Armenian soldiers did not return from the battlefield. Many of them fell during the liberation of Belarus.”