ST. PETERSBURG, January 18. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin laid a wreath at the Mother Motherland monument at the Piskarevskoe Memorial Cemetery in St. Petersburg on Saturday to commemorate the 77th anniversary since the Soviet Army opened a narrow land corridor into Leningrad (the city's name in 1924-1991), which had been besieged by Nazi forces since the autumn of 1941.
Having laid the wreath at the foot of the monument, the head of state approached the monument and adjusted the tricolor ribbons on the wreath. On his way to the monument, the president also laid flowers at one of the mass graves, where his little brother Viktor, who died in the besieged city in the winter of 1942, was buried.
In the mourning procession at the Piskarevskoe Memorial Cemetery, Putin was accompanied by St. Petersburg’s Governor Alexander Beglov, Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative to the Northwestern Federal District Alexander Gutsan, as well as some people who lived through the siege in Leningrad and the veterans who defended the city during World War Two. Alongside Putin, they walked along a 300-meter alley past the mass graves from the eternal flame to the monument.
The Piskarevskoe Memorial Cemetery is believed to be the largest mass burial site of World War Two. Mass burials were carried out on the northern outskirts of Leningrad, the area called Piskarevka, during the harshest winter of 1941-1942, when several thousand civilians daily died in the besieged city of famine, freezing cold and bombardments. Up to now, just 150,000 people buried then at the Piskarevskoe cemetery have been identified. Searches are still ongoing. The memorial was opened on that site in 1960.