Skip to main content

Russia and Putin mark 75 years since WWII siege of Leningrad


ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) — The Russian city of St. Petersburg marked the 75th anniversary of the end of the World War II siege by Nazi forces with a large military parade Sunday in the city’s sprawling Palace Square.
Russian President Vladimir Putin later laid flowers at a monument in Piskarevskoye Cemetery, where hundreds of thousands of siege victims are buried.
The siege of the city, then called Leningrad, lasted nearly 2½ years until the Soviet Army drove the Nazis away on Jan. 27, 1944.
Estimates of the death toll vary, but historians agree that more than 1 million Leningrad residents died from hunger or air and artillery bombardments during the siege.
On Sunday, more than 2,500 soldiers and 80 units of military equipment paraded as snow fell and temperatures hovered around minus-18 degrees Celsius (0 Fahrenheit). The vehicles included a T-34 tank; such tanks played a key role in defeating the Nazis and became a widely revered symbol of the nation’s wartime valor and suffering.
During the siege, most Leningrad residents had to survive on rations of just 125 grams (less than 0.3 pounds) of bread a day and whatever other food they could buy or exchange at local markets after selling their belongings.
Among those who succumbed to the deprivations of the siege was Putin’s 1-year-old brother. Putin himself was born after the siege, in 1952.
The Russian president did not attend the parade, which some civic groups had objected to as inappropriate, saying the day should commemorate the victims rather than flaunt military strength.
The Kremlin also announced Sunday that Putin had signed an order allocating 150 million rubles ($2.3 million) for creating new exhibits at the state museum of the siege.
“Today we mourn those who died defending Leningrad, who at the cost of their lives broke through the blockade. We recall those who worked in the besieged city, who, risking themselves, delivered bread and medicine along the Road of Life,” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev wrote on social media.
Medvedev was referring to the ice road across Lake Ladoga that was the only conduit for supplies and evacuations during much of the siege.
Tamara Chernykh, 81, told The Associated Press that she still can’t forget the tiny pieces of bread that her granny used to put under her pillow as a night treat for a starving four-year-old girl in besieged Leningrad during the deadly winter of 1941-1942.
In the daytime, Chernykh said she and her baby cousin mostly stayed put under several blankets in the darkness. There was no heating during the first and the coldest winter of the siege, when temperatures outside sometimes plunged to -40 degrees Celsius (-40 degrees Fahrenheit).
Chernykh’s grandmother, who gave the bread out of her own scant food ration, said the crumbs would bring good dreams. She died from starvation before the siege ended.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mrs Len Burton was a Cotswolds mother of three renowned for her perfect scones - but was also a colonel in Russian intelligence who sent Britain's atomic secrets from her privy

Ben Macintyre's book Agent Sonya tells the story of Soviet spy Colonel Ursula Kuczynski Ben Macintyre's book Agent Sonya tells story of  Colonel Ursula Kuczynski  She lived in Oxfordshire hamlet Great Rollright and was known as Mrs Burton  The spy was on active duty and had radio transmitter tuned to Soviet intelligence She fled to East Berlin in 1950 and retired as a spy before dying in 2000 aged 93 Her scones were the envy of the Oxfordshire hamlet of Great Rollright, where the friendly woman known as Mrs Burton lived in a stone farmhouse. In her late 30s, she moved there with her three children and husband Len just after the end of World War II.  She had a faint foreign accent but the locals took no notice and she soon became a stalwart of village life. They were unaware of the massive secret she was hiding — one that even now, 75 years later, had me reeling in amazement at the audacity and ingenuity it involved on her part.  And the unforgivable treache...
Post a Comment
Read more

Parents charged in horrific murder of their 4-year-old daughter who was boiled alive on New Year's day

                      A Michigan couple has been charged with one of the most heinous murders that is being referred to as the "worst child death case" ever after their 4-year-old daughter died in a "scalding bath" in Michigan. Candice Diaz, 24, and Brad Fields, 28, were charged with murder, torture, and child abuse and both denied bail. Gabrielle died on New Year's Day after living a life filled with abuse. Doctors say she suffered multiple injuries, including severe burns on her limbs after she was in a bath with scalding hot water. A medical practitioner, who examined Gabrielle Barrett's body, described the alleged murder as the "worst child death case" in 27 years of his career, according to a court document. The document also allegedly states that the four-year-old was burned so badly that her big toe fell off, and police found melted skin in the drain. Gabrielle's mother, Diaz, and her partner, Fi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Covid-19 patient 'is raped by an ambulance driver while being taken to hospital' in India

A 19-year-old girl was allegedly raped by an ambulance driver on her way to the hospital after she tested positive for COVID-19.    The teenage girl was reportedly attacked by a man known as V Noufal, 29, while on their way to the Firstline Covid Treatment Centre in Pathanamthitta district of Kerala, India, on Saturday night, September 5.   Noufal was arrested on Sunday morning September 6, after the victim told a staff of the hospital about the alleged incident when she arrived in Pandalam.    After his arrest, Police said he had not obtained the mandatory clearance certificate before joining as a driver.   Health Minister KK Shailaja described the attack in Kerala as 'shocking' and 'inhuman'.    A health department official told The Indian Express that the driver is usually sent alone to a particular locality to pick up patients to limit the exposure of health workers.    The official said: 'The driver’s chambe...
Post a Comment
Read more