Photos

Red dots mark the locations of fires burning in countries south and east of the Baltic Sea in this early April image. The scattered fires were probably set to clear land for agricultural purposes. The Scandinavian countries, Norway and Sweden, and Finland to the north of the Sea, are still blanketed in snow. From the left, the countries lining the Baltic on the south are Denmark, Germany, Poland, Russia (Kaliningrad), Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Russia. Belarus forms the lower right corner of the image. Photo courtesy of NASA.

The Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Minsk was formerly a Roman Catholic church with an associated Bernadine monastery. The complex was built in the Vilnius Baroque style from 1642 into the 1700s. It is particularly renowned for its marvelous old icons.

A view of the Yama (Death Pit) Holocaust Memorial in Minsk. The figures are part of a group descending into the pit to be executed.

A panel on the World War II Monument in Minsk's Victory Square. An eternal flame burns at the base of the memorial that was constructed in 1954 to commemorate the country's war dead.

Hundreds of Belarusian villages were wiped out during World War II - many were never rebuilt. This is part of the memorial at Khatyn, which commemorates the village that was annihilated on 1 March 1943 during Nazi reprisals against Belarusian partisans.