Belarus – 2014 World Ice Hockey Championship in Minsk Arena 2012 Proof Silver 20 Roubles 38.61mm (33.63 grams) 0.925 Silver (1.0001 oz. ASW) Reference: KM# 480 | Engraver: O.Novosiolova Certification: NGC PF 69 ULTRA CAMEO 2854680-002 РЭСПУБЛІКА БЕЛАРУСЬ ЧЭМПIЯНАТ СВЕТУ ПА ХАКЕI 2014 ГОДА · МIНСК-АРЭНА 2012 20 РУБЛЁЎ Ag 925, Arena facade. IIHF 2014 BELARU, Hockey Players on the rink.
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The 2014 Men’s Ice Hockey World Championships was the 78th such event organized by the International Ice Hockey Federation. Teams participated at six levels of competition. The competition also served as qualifications for division placements in the 2015 competition. The selection of Belarus as hosts caused great controversy and initiated the Minsk2014. The European Parliament called the IIHF to move the venue and demanded the release of all political prisoners as a condition to continue the Championship in Minsk.
“The campaign “Don’t Play with the Dictator” aimed at removing the Ice-Hockey World Championship 2014 from Belarus to be organized in a different country, has been shut down. The campaign has highlighted the grim human rights situation in Belarus under president Alexander Lukashenko, and aimed at increasing the pressure for improvements.” The top division championship took place with the participation of sixteen teams from 9 to 25 May 2014. Belarus hosted the event with games played in Minsk.
Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus covers an area of 207,600 square kilometres (80,200 sq mi), with a population of 9.4 million, and is the thirteenth-largest and the twentieth-most populous country in Europe. The country is administratively divided into seven regions, and is one of the world’s most urbanized, with over 40% of its total land area forested. Minsk is the country’s capital and largest city.
Until the 20th century, different states at various times controlled the lands of modern-day Belarus, including Kievan Rus’, the Principality of Polotsk, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Russian Empire. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917, different states arose competing for legitimacy amidst the Civil War, ultimately ending in the rise of the Byelorussian SSR, which became a founding constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1922. After the Polish-Soviet War, Belarus lost almost half of its territory to Poland. Much of the borders of Belarus took their modern shape in 1939, when some lands of the Second Polish Republic were reintegrated into it after the Soviet invasion of Poland, and were finalized after World War II. During WWII, military operations devastated Belarus, which lost about a quarter of its population and half of its economic resources. The republic was redeveloped in the post-war years. In 1945, the Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations, along with the Soviet Union.
The parliament of the republic proclaimed the sovereignty of Belarus on 27 July 1990, and during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Belarus declared independence on 25 August 1991. Following the adoption of a new constitution in 1994, Alexander Lukashenko was elected Belarus’s first president in the country’s first and only free election post-independence, serving as president ever since. Lukashenko’s government is widely considered to be authoritarian and human rights groups consider human rights in the country to be poor. Belarus is the only country in Europe officially using the death penalty. Lukashenko continued a number of Soviet-era policies, such as state ownership of large sections of the economy. In 2000, Belarus and Russia signed a treaty for greater cooperation, forming the Union State.
Belarus is a developing country ranking very high in the Human Development Index. It has been a member of the United Nations since its founding; and a member of the CIS, the CSTO, the EAEU, and the Non-Aligned Movement, it has shown no aspirations for joining the European Union but nevertheless maintains a bilateral relationship with the Union, and likewise participates in two EU projects: the Eastern Partnership and the Baku Initiative.
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