PETERSBURG: The Russian city of St. Petersburg has marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II siege by Nazi troops with a series of memorial events attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and allies, local and western media reported.
The Russian President laid flowers at a monument to fallen Soviet defenders of the city, then called Leningrad, and then at Piskarevskoye Cemetery, where thousands of siege victims are buried.
Putin was also joined by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Gatchina, a town outside St. Petersburg that once housed camps for Soviet detainees of war, for the unveiling of a statue commemorating civilian people killed during the Nazi attack.
Siege of Leningrad
The Red Army also broke the nearly two-and-a-half year blockade on January 19, 1943, following fierce fighting. President Putin was born in Leningrad, and his World War II veteran father suffered injuries while fighting for the city.
When Nazi forces encircled Leningrad on September 8, 1941, Zimneva a local woman had over 40 relatives in the city, she added. Only thirteen of them lived to see the breaking of the siege in the city.
Before the anniversary memorials, an open-air exhibition was also set up in central St. Petersburg to remind locals of some of most harrowing moments in the history of city. World War II, in which the former Soviet Union lost around 27 million people, is a linchpin of Russia’s identity.
