Putin Commemorates 82nd Anniversary of Leningrad’s Liberation from Nazi Blockade
Russia : President Vladimir Putin participated in ceremonies marking the 82nd anniversary of Leningrad’s complete liberation from the Nazi blockade, honoring the memory of those who sacrificed their lives during the 872-day siege.
The President visited the Nevsky Pyatachok memorial military-historical complex in the Leningrad region, laying flowers at the Border Stone monument. Nevsky Pyatachok, a small strategic position on the left bank of the Neva River, was fiercely defended by Soviet fighters from the early days of the blockade, preventing enemy forces from advancing on Leningrad. The Border Stone monument, inaugurated in 1971, stands in memory of the soldiers who fell defending the city.
The monument features lines by poet Robert Rozhdestvensky:
“You who are alive, know that we did not want to leave this earth and did not. We stood to death in the dark Neva. We died so that you could live.”
President Putin also visited the Piskaryov Memorial Cemetery in St. Petersburg, laying a wreath at the “Motherland” monument to honor both the citizens and defenders of Leningrad. The cemetery holds 186 communal graves and six thousand individual graves, commemorating approximately 420,000 residents who perished from hunger, cold, disease, and bombings, along with 70,000 soldiers.
Behind the monument, a memorial wall bears the words of poet Olga Berggolz:
“No one has forgotten and nothing has been forgotten.”
The blockade of Leningrad by Nazi German forces lasted from September 8, 1941, to January 27, 1944. Of the three million residents living in Leningrad and its suburbs before the siege, only about 800,000 survived by the time the blockade ended.
