Anniversary of the Siege of Leningrad: Putin visits his older brother's grave

Inessa Sinchougova
Fort Russ News
Sat, 27 Jan 2018 10:01 UTC

Putin visits his brother's grave

January 18th, 2018 marked the 75th anniversary of the breaking of the Siege of Leningrad in World War II. The Nazi German forces held the city captive for 872 days, without letting through food supplies and bombardment overhead. More than one million residents either starved to death or died while defending the city.

President Vladimir Putin's father was wounded at Nevsky Piatochok, where in face of Nazi aggression, the average survival time of Soviet soldiers was from 3 seconds to 58 seconds - leading to the world's largest mass grave burial sites at Peskaryevskoe Cemetery.

The amount of people buried there is still largely disputed. Vladimir Putin's older brother, who also died during the Siege of Leningrad at the age of two, is among them. His father would go on to recover from his injuries, and Vladimir Putin was born a decade after the events.