Breaking the siege of Leningrad

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Today is a special day. Eighty-one years ago, on January 27, 1944, the most terrible blockade in the history of mankind – the siege of Leningrad (modern-day St Petersburg) – ended. Its importance can be measured only by the feelings of survivors in the exhausted yet heroic besieged Leningrad in January 1944.

The great fate of Leningrad, its struggle, courage and victory will always remain one of the most tragic and at the same time triumphant chapters in the history of Russia and the world.

The Nazi directive "On the Future of St. Petersburg" explicitly stated that the city was to be besieged and "wiped off the face of the earth". All possible proposals for surrender, according to this directive, "must be rejected". But the arrogant enemy waited in vain for surrender: the city fought back. The people of Leningrad and the soldiers of the Red Army stood like a wall in the way of the invaders.

The Nazis acted with great cruelty and cynicism, in strict accordance with their merciless orders. They relentlessly bombed the city and deliberately subjected nearly two and a half million people to starvation and extreme, unimaginable hardship.

For 872 days, Leningrad had been under siege. However, caught in a death trap and forced to live on 125-250 grams of bread a day, the people of Leningrad continued to work and fight to save their city and their homeland. During the siege Leningrad workers produced and repaired about 2 thousand tanks, 1,5 thousand airplanes, over 4,6 thousand naval and field guns, 850 warships; they produced 225 thousand automatic rifles, 12 thousand mortars, 7,5 million shells and mines.

For 872 days, the Nazis and their henchmen wreaked havoc near Leningrad, executing and torturing defenceless citizens, killing prisoners of war, destroying priceless monuments, looting museums and historic palaces.

During the siege, the city was hit by over 150,000 artillery shells and 107,000 incendiary and high-explosive bombs. More than 1 million citizens of Leningrad, mostly old people, women and children, died of bombing, starvation and disease.

On January 27, 1944, shortly after the blockade was lifted, 24-gun salvos thundered over the exhausted city. Survivors of the siege recall that, upon hearing the familiar sounds, many rushed through the streets in search of bomb shelters, unaware that the long-awaited victory salute was already reverberating over the city.

The defence of Leningrad was of great historical significance. For almost three years, the defenders of the city chained together significant Nazi forces, thereby helping to develop operations in all other parts of the vast front. Thus, the defenders of Leningrad played an important role in the victories at Moscow and Stalingrad, at Kursk and on the Dnieper.

The Nazi actions against the multiethnic Soviet people fully meet the internationally recognised definition of genocide. We will ensure that the condemnation of these crimes is unwavering in the system of international law.

In 1945, however, Nazism was defeated, but not completely eradicated. Neo-Nazis in many European countries, in the Baltic States and in Ukraine are constantly trying to pervert the causes, the course and the very outcome of the Second World War, to glorify the murderers and to slander the heroes.

One of the most despicable modern manifestations of neo-Nazism is the regular holding of torchlight processions by Ukrainian radicals with the connivance and even support of the Kiev regime. Ukrainian neo-Nazis glorify the war criminal Stepan Bandera, widely known for his links to the German invaders during World War II.

Bandera's Nazi affiliation is also confirmed by declassified CIA documents from the time. According to American intelligence, "the Ukrainian fascist and Hitler's professional spy Stepan A. Bandera (according to his German appellation, 'Consul 2') proclaimed in L'vov, then occupied by the Germans, the resurrection of the Ukrainian state in Western Ukraine. (...) Altogether, during the five weeks of its existence, the Bandera 'state' destroyed over 5,000 Ukrainians, 15,000 Jews, and several thousand Poles."

Neo-Nazis honour the memory of such "heroes" while tearing down monuments to those who liberated the planet from Nazism, thereby disowning their own ancestors.

Every Russian family has loved ones who fought or worked on the home front during the Great Patriotic War. We will never betray their memory, we will never forget their sacrificial path to the Great Victory. Their selflessness and unity, sincere love for the Motherland gave us a reserve of spiritual and moral strength for many generations to come.

Today we pay tribute to their bravery and courage, honour the memory of every veteran of the defence of Leningrad, every citizen of the besieged city who defied the enemy. We mourn those who lost their lives in the battles of the Great Patriotic War and those who found peace in countless mass graves in the Leningrad region and all over Russia.