The Russian city of St Petersburg has marked the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War siege by Nazi forces with a large military parade in the city’s Palace Square.
The siege of the city, then called Leningrad, lasted nearly two and a half years until the Soviet army drove the Nazis out on January 27 1944.
On Sunday, more than 2,500 soldiers and 80 units of military equipment paraded as snow fell and temperatures hovered around minus 18C.
During the siege, most Leningrad residents had to survive on rations of just 125 grammes of bread a day and whatever other food they could buy or exchange at local markets after selling their belongings.
Russian President Vladimir Putin later laid flowers at a monument in Piskarevskoye Cemetery, where hundreds of thousands of siege victims are buried.
Among those who succumbed to the deprivations of the siege was the one-year-old brother of Mr Putin. The president himself was born after the siege, in 1952.
“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.
He was referring to the ice road across Lake Ladoga that was the only conduit for supplies and evacuations during much of the siege.
