Belarus general opens barracks butcher shop, gifts Stalin statuette

A meat plant has opened a branded shop in the barracks of an elite military unit in Minsk. At the ceremony, the commander of Belarus's interior troops gave the company's director a statuette of Joseph Stalin, the Belarusian outlet Zerkalo reports.

The company announced the opening of its third branded store, Mogilevskij masokombinat, on Instagram. It said the guests of honor were the deputy interior minister and commander of the interior troops, Maj. Gen. Nikolai Karpenkov, and the plant's director general, Alexander Milyutin.

The shop is located on the grounds of military unit 3214, the 3rd Separate Special Purpose Brigade, which is under Karpenkov's command. After an opening speech, he presented Milyutin with a figurine of the Soviet dictator. The press service of the Interior Ministry's internal troops did not explain what the gift meant.

Unit 3214 took part in the brutal suppression of anti-government protests in 2020, the portal Zmina notes. It also links the unit to military training of young people from the occupied territories of Ukraine. According to Lithuania's LRT, the brigade's troops also helped move migrants to the borders of Belarus and the Baltic states.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz