today st. petersburg, together with the whole of russia, honors the memory of the heroically fallen leningraders, it is exactly 80 years since the final breakthrough of the fascist blockade of the city on the neva. a whole series of events on the importance of preserving historical memory has ended in st. petersburg, alexey golovko. it seems that this stream of people is...

vladimir putin with a bouquet of malykhros at the peskarevsky cemetery is walking along a side alley, it is here that his brother victor, who died in the besieged city in 1942, rests in common grave number 27.

in total , half a million leningraders are buried in this relatively small area alone, mostly victims of the first, most terrible winter of the siege. for the president, as well as for the entire city of nanivei, the day of lifting the blockade is certainly a very personal event, a personal holiday. those 900 days became part of the genetic code of every st. petersburger, every leningrader. and january 27 is a great holiday in st. petersburg. a minute of silence passes under another symbol of the blockade, the leningrad metronome, and immediately the russian anthem is played by the honor guard orchestra. on

on his way back, the president was greeted by the residents of st. petersburg. the sounds of a metronome from radio points in the intervals between reports from the sovinfor bureau reminded people in the winter from 1941 to 1942 that the city was still alive. rare, barely walking figures appeared on the streets, taking them on sleds to bury their loved ones. the norm for bread production is 120.5 grams ; it’s forty-degree frosts outside, houses are being bombed by the nazis, but the city did not surrender, just as the red army soldiers from the bridgehead on the neva patch did not surrender, trying to break the enemy’s ring; the president’s father was seriously wounded here vladimir speredonovich putin, here now there is a boundary stone, where it is inscribed, you living know that we did not leave this land, defending on the neva patch.

unarmed, defenseless elderly people, women, children, and disabled people were well-thought-out systemic punitive actions. these villainous goals are reflected in many nazi documents and are embodied in terrible, chilling mass executions and murders of civilians . belarusian khatyn and bryansk khatsun, krasnaya, babiyar, zmeevskaya beam and tin. the slide is only a small part of those

places where massacres took place. death was put on stream in concentration camps, ghettos, prisons, in germany...

glorifies hitler's accomplices, the ss men, uses terror against all undesirables, barbaric shelling of peaceful cities and towns continues, murders of old people, women, children. in a number of european countries, russophobia is promoted as a state policy. we

will do everything, everything to stop and completely eradicate nazism. followers of the nazi executioners, no matter what they call themselves today. memory of the victims of that war, of the heroism of our fathers and grandfathers, today it is preventing many from living, especially the ideological henchmen of murderers and traitors, it is they who today feel and

honor the executioners in their parliaments, it is they who started the war on graves and monuments in poland, the baltic states and ukraine. complete madmen, how can you think that by destroying the monument, you will destroy the memory that lives in the heart of the people, the people who have found the strength to build new peaceful relations with those states that just yesterday brought suffering and death to our lands, the memory of the heroism of the victors , their spiritual feat,

they knew what was happening during the war, the most terrible war in the history of mankind, and that we would do everything possible and impossible to ensure that this never happened again. the anniversary day of the lifting of the blockade is leningrad victory day. on many streets of st. petersburg today you can completely immerse yourself in the atmosphere of those days, put flowers on signs warning of the danger of shelling, or literally step into history. installed everywhere. special portals showing what the city’s sights looked like during the war, on on vasilievsky island , a fire burns above the raster columns, which happens only on the most important days for the northern capital. alexey glovko, anna kolk, natalya lundovskaya, alexey korpukhin and andrey sorokin. news from st. petersburg.

on august 27, 1941, tens of thousands of soviet refugees gathered in the port of tallinn. the day before the baltic. the fleet was given an order to urgently leave this city and break through to leningrad. the germans have already captured most of estonia. the passage of our ships from tallinn to leningrad. the battle of leningrad became the most the long-term defense of a large city in the history of the second world war, it

lasted 2 years, 4 months and 10 days, this is a unique case in history, it never happened that a city of many millions was under siege for 900 days, survived, survived, lost a million people, but didn't give up. why did hitler stop his troops on the threshold of leningrad. who helped the nazis surround the northern capital. how did leningraders survive during the siege?

on september 4, 1941, artillery cannonade rang out on the outskirts of leningrad. shot german guns. the day before, the advanced units of the wehrmacht captured the villages of chudovo and tosno south of the city and cut the railway connecting the northern capital with moscow. now the german army stood only 56 km from the center of leningrad. on september 8 , the first aerial bombs fell on the city.

in just one day, german pilots dropped over 6.00 bombs. a total of 178 fires broke out in the city. as a result of the bombing , badaev's food warehouses also burned down. in leningrad it was the largest food storage facility. fire destroyed 3.00 tons of flour. and 2,500 tons of sugar. on the same day, another terrible news came. the germans reached the coast of lake lador, captured shliiselburg and completely surrounded leningrad. the city was finally cut off from the rest of the soviet union. there are only 30 days of food and fuel left. soviet poetess olga bergolts.

prepare all military and transport ships for sinking. in leningrad , they ordered admiral trib to immediately plan to blow up almost 400 enterprises. all port facilities and bridges. for leningrad was of enormous importance in the soviet union. it can even be said that, in a number of parameters, it may have been even more important than moscow. so to speak, aurora shot there, a revolution took place there, lenin spoke from an armored car, and this city bears the name of lenin. that is, for the soviet union leningrad is

something sacred. moscow is the center of power, the center of force, where stalin sits, where the central committee sits, where party congresses meet. and leningrad is something spiritual, the spiritual capital of the soviet union, and also of the russian empire, that is, it’s still going on, let’s say, here this is a reference to imperial significance, for lenin it was absolutely unimportant, but for stalin it is important, therefore, in all respects, leningrad was extremely important, it is the second largest city in the soviet union after moscow, the city of three revolutions, when hitler was planning to seize leningrad, he just emphasized. this moment, this city must be destroyed as a symbol of bolshevism, after the defeat of the soviet union, we do not need this city, its population must be either destroyed or expelled, the city itself is methodically through shelling, bombing, destroyed to the ground, this was hitler’s plan, which did not imply any deviations.

on september 9, 1941, zhdanov and voroshilov received an urgent telegram from stalin. it said: we are outraged by your behavior, which is expressed in the fact that you only tell us about our loss of this or that area, but usually do not say a word about what measures you have taken to stop, finally lose cities and stations, it was also disgraceful that you reported the loss of shlitelburg, will there be an end to the losses, maybe you have already decided to pass? on the same day, an urgent meeting of the headquarters was held in moscow. stalin appointed forty-year-old general georgy zhukov as the new commander of the leningrad front. the supreme commander threw the talented soviet commander into the most difficult sectors of the front. just a few days ago, zhukov recaptured the city of yelnya

near smolensk from the germans. this was one of the first victories of the red army during... the entire war, now stalin ordered the general to defend leningrad at any cost. on september 10, zhukov urgently took off to the northern capital. when approaching lake ladash, soviet planes were attacked by messer shmita. the military transport douglos with zhukov on board was miraculously not shot down. as soon as he landed, the general went to smolny. the security did not immediately let him in ; they checked his pass for almost a quarter of an hour. they said he ordered that after that the door to the meeting room of the beetles was kicked down. having removed varoshilov from command, he immediately telegraphed to moscow. we decided not to take any measures in case of surrender of the city yet. we will protect leningrad to the last man. zhukov

immediately strengthened discipline in the army. the capable population of leningrad was ordered to be sent to build new defensive lines. work was carried out daily in several shifts. in some areas of the front, electric current was passed through wire fences. in the mariinsky theater workshop, 150

tank models were built from wood and cardboard. zhukov ordered them to be stationed in the pulkovo area to shoot down the enemy. because not a single battle has brought such a tragedy to the civilian population, such colossal casualties of the civilian population, and formally, regardless of military operations, that is...

the german group of army north with a total number of about 700 thousand people was supposed to capture the city. these were mainly infantry divisions transferred to the eastern front from western europe. the commander of army group north, general field marshal wilhelm von leep , was considered an exemplary german military leader. an officer of the old school, he looked down on the nazi upstarts and was not shy.

about the future of the city of st. petersburg. in it it was said. the city of st. petersburg from the face of the earth. after the defeat of the soviet army, the existence of this city will not make any sense. it is proposed to tightly blockade the city

and level it with the help of artillery of all calibers and continuous bombing from the air. if, as a result of the situation created in the city, applications for the surrender of the city follow, they must be rejected. in the end, hitler decided that he would not fight leningrad. the wehrmacht is an offensive army, it is a shock army. and the city ones battles have their own specifics, and very serious ones at that. plus, when a city is occupied, naturally there is a german military administration there, which automatically takes on the task of supplying the population. because the population has to eat somehow. there is nothing in the city. that is, okay, let the local population die, but if they die en masse, then this is the threat of an epidemic. therefore, hitler did all this...

in mid-october , the 250th spanish infantry division arrived near leningrad to help the germans. spanish soldiers usually wore blue or blue shirts and therefore this formation was often called the blue division. it was formed in madrid in july 1941 . mostly volunteers were recruited into the division. these people went to distant russia for ideological reasons. according to them . they wanted to get even with the communists, whom they considered responsible for starting the civil war in spain. here is unique newsreel footage.

spanish volunteers on the leningrad front perform traditional folk entertainment. karida or bullfighting. before sending to front, every spanish soldier took an oath. i swear to god. absolute loyalty to the head of the german army, adolf hitler, in the fight against communism. i swear to fight like a brave soldier and give my life at any moment to fulfill this oath. in total , during the war years , from 40 to 50,000 people served in the ranks of the blue division. near leningrad , spanish units held the defense south of lake ladazh. in the north , hitler was helped to maintain the blockade of leningrad by his other ally, marshal of finland karl manerheim.

he wanted to return the territories lost by finland as a result of the soviet-finnish war. the finnish army invaded the ussr on june 29 , 1941. she managed to capture most of soviet karelia, including the cities of vyborg and petrozavodsk. by the beginning of autumn, finnish troops stopped on the karelian isthmus just 30 km from leningrad. september 11, 1900.

and they are responsible for the deaths of civilians. yes, monerheim had a lot of things connected with russia, he was born on the territory of the grand duchy of fenland, he studied in the famous fredriksham cadet corps, but at the same time he was an extremely anti-soviet person. i don’t want to say that he was a russophobe, she probably still had some memories of her former homeland, especially since he had a russian wife, he was married to the daughter of a general. rapova, this also needs to be remembered, and he left two daughters from her, but at the same time , as a politician, he was absolutely pro-german, pro-hitler, hitler was his idol, hitler personally awarded him the knightly order of the iron cross, and he very much supported the idea the so-called greater finland, the theory according to which finland should at least capture eastern corelia, what they called eastern corelia, our corelia, yes, and they should have captured ingenbandia, the entire

territory surrounding the treasure. in mid-october 1941, the germans captured st. petersburg and reached the southern shore of the gulf of finland. here, soviet ships opened fire on the wehrmacht columns. the flagship of the baltic fleet was the battlecruiser marat. this formidable dreadnolt class ship was built in 1914 and was originally was called petropavlovsky. participated in the first world war, the civil war and the soviet-finnish war. marat was equipped with twelve large-caliber guns that fired projectiles weighing 470 kg at a distance of up to 30 km. each gun could fire up to three rounds per minute. in the first days of the blockade, marat fired 953 main-caliber shells at the enemy.

caused the detonation of the ammunition on the main bow of the ship and pierced two gun decks. there was an explosion of terrible force. one of the gun turrets flew into the air and collapsed down. the entire bow of the battleship was destroyed. the explosion killed 324 people, including the ship's commander. marat lay down on... the ground,

but did not sink. soon, some of its guns were restored and already in october lenkor continued to fire at german troops. the dilapidated marad subsequently destroyed 86 german batteries. in the oranienbaum area , the heavy howitzers of the krasnaya gorka fort opened fire on the germans. this fortification was built at the beginning of the 20th century specifically for...