In an interview with journalists after a ceremony to lay a wreath at a monument to mark the Day of Memory and Honour in Tashkent on 9 May, the president said that the Uzbek nation paid a great price for the victory, sacrificing many people.

In his interview broadcast on Uzbek TV the same day, President Karimov said: "I would like to cite some figures. Uzbekistan’s population was approximately 6.5 million at the beginning of 1941. Of them, exactly 1,433,000 took part in the war. If we take into account that over 50% of the population were children and old people, as you know at present 48.5% of our population is young people under 18, if it is the case, plus women to the number, it simply means that 70-80% of the population, who was able to hold a gun, had fought in the battle fields. However, we put their number in the papers at 50-60%. I want to draw journalists’ attention to this fact. Just try to imagine the figure. Currently, when somewhere people make parades and make laud speeches, they should not forget about those republics, including Uzbekistan, which was so far away from battle fields, I mean in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, though we are located in Asia, which is quite far away. However, 70-80% of the population had fought in the bloody battles. Nobody knew who would win the war in the first days of the battles. We should remember what price was paid for it in the early days of the war. Therefore, nobody should ever forget this. Above all we, the citizens of Uzbekistan, people of Uzbekistan and its leadership, as well as every person should keep in mind what great price Uzbekistan had paid for the sake of the victory. And when large-scale parades with the participation of aircraft, tanks and rockets are held, it would be nice to recall how many Uzbeks had died in the battle fields. Nobody should ever forget this. All we - Tajiks, Uzbeks, Kyrgyzs, Kazakhs and Turkmens - took part in the war as one entity."

The president also spoke about Uzbekistan’s stance on maintaining regional security, specifically in stabilizing Afghanistan.

"A war is going on not far away from us. The Afghan war has been going on for 30 years. Nobody can see an end to the war so far. I say once again the war in various forms is going on for 30 years now. How many people fall victim to the war there. That is, everything what had happened in WWII is now taking place next to us. Moreover, Soviet military units entered Afghanistan in 1979 through Uzbekistan to fulfil their so-called international duty. What is an international duty in fact? How one should understand this? And why should one sacrifice their young children, who are to live long, fall in love, give birth to their babies and be happy, for the sake of an international duty? And should these young people sacrifice themselves for an international duty?! How laud, false and empty the words were. All we know what was its end. The war is still under way. Nobody knows when it will end and how many more people will fall victim to the war. Everybody knows how much the Afghan people are suffering. In that war, when the Soviet army entered Afghanistan, hundred thousands of Afghans died. People are still dying there now. The Uzbek people have a saying: a blind man loses his stick only once. What is a conclusion from this, it is simple - we live to remember, I repeat, we live to remember. Nothing is forgotten. I keep saying the simple truth. I will say it again: the people who forget their history and do not learn lessons from it may make more mistakes. From this standpoint, I want to say we cannot allow ourselves to make a similar mistake. The mistake we had made when we were a member of the Soviet Union. Today’s reality has changed since then, above all, we have changed," he said.

Uzbekistan will never be a "small change" in the hands of certain big powers, the president concluded without naming the powers.

"When we say that we cannot allow ourselves to make those mistakes for the second time, which we made sometime ago it means that we cannot simply be a small change in somebody else’s will or for the sake of certain strategic and geopolitical interests of great powers. Uzbekistan will never be a small change anymore. We have our own views, minds, values and history that teaches us a lot of things. Moreover, today our society, our people know very well for what they live and know very well what future they are building and how to achieve it. Most importantly, our people know very well and have made up far-reaching conclusions on how to defend their security and their future - their children’s peace," he said.