Press Release, 18.01.2023

Photo: Nikolai Rybakov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

On 18 January, the 80th anniversary of the breaking of the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War, the leaders of the Yabloko party in St. Petersburg and Moscow paid tribute to the memory of the victims. Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov laid flowers at the Leningrad Stele in the Alexander Garden in Moscow. Alexander Shishlov, head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg and Coordinator of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko, honoured the memory of the soldiers and the victims of the siege at the monument in Victory Square in St. Petersburg.

One of the most terrible and tragic periods of the Second World War in the USSR was the blockade of Leningrad, which lasted 872 days, from 8 September, 1941, to 27 January, 1944. More than 600,000 people died during the siege. Many contemporaries, participants in those events, noted that the greatest joy for Leningraders came precisely on 18 January, 1943, when two fronts of the Soviet army were able to break through a small section of the blockade and returned to Leningrad, which was dying of hunger and cold, communication with the country.

Photo: Alexander Shishlov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

“Now every day you think about the price of human life, about the importance of saving people. The flowers that we bring today to places of memory are not only a tribute to the memory of Leningraders and the defenders of the besieged city. These flowers are a sign of our hope for peace,” Nikolai Rybakov noted.

“Today is 80 years since the breaking of the siege of Leningrad. The most important step towards the complete liberation of our city from the blockade, which took place a year later. My parents, who were under the siege, who were then teenagers, remembered this joyful day. Eternal memory to those who gave their lives. Health and warmth from loved ones to the blockade survivors who are with us today. Nobody is forgotten and nothing is forgotten. Never again. And nowhere,” Boris Vishnevsky, MP of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg and Deputy Chairman of Yabloko, wrote on his Telegram channel.