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President Ilves to participate in the celebrations of the 95th anniversary of the Battle of Võnnu in Cēsis and receive the Victory Day parade in Valga
20.06.2014
The President, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, will travel to Cēsis on Sunday, 22 June, to participate with the Head of State of Latvia, Andris Bērziņš, in the events organised to celebrate the 95th anniversary of the Battle of Võnnu, which was won by Estonians and Latvians.
A military parade will take place in Cēsis – or Võnnu, and a flag unit of the Republic of Estonia will march at the parade together with a group from the Pärnu District of the Defence League.
On the evening of the same day, President Ilves and Evelin Ilves will be present at a charity concert at Valga Cultural Centre, which is being organised by the Carolin Illenzeer Foundation. The foundation was established to support the children of soldiers of the Estonian Defence Forces who were killed or badly wounded in foreign missions.
On 23 June, the Estonian Head of State will host President Bērziņš in Valga, where he will also receive the Victory Day parade organised by the Estonian Defence League; seven teams of Zemessardze, the voluntary national defence organisation of the Republic of Latvia, will also take part in the parade. The parade will end in Valka, followed by the regular demonstration of technical equipment of the Defence Forces and the Defence League of Estonia; soldiers' soup will be distributed on Estonian-Latvian border.
Presidents Ilves and Bērziņš agreed some years ago to organise a joint Estonian and Latvian parade to celebrate the 95th anniversary of the Battle of Võnnu.
In June 2012, during a state visit to Latvia, President Ilves said: "The sentence that was published in October 1919 in the Latvian newspaper "Bribwà Seme" to greet the arrival of Estonian armoured trains in Riga is also valid today: "By supporting us you will support yourselves"."
In remarking on the joint parade, the Commander of Zemessardze, Colonel Leonīds Kalniņš, said that it serves to prove the national defence solidarity of the Baltic states.
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