Vladimir Putin attended events to commemorate the 75th anniversary since breaking Nazi siege of Leningrad, his native city. Vladimir Putin senior was a World War II veteran who was wounded while defending the city.
The Russian city St. Petersburg regained its historic name after the 1991 Soviet collapse, earlier it was known as Leningrad, a city named after Vladimir Lenin. During the World War II, this big city was under Nazi blockade over nearly 900 days. The Red Army broke the blockade of the city on January 19, 1943, after fierce fighting.
Putin was born in Leningrad, the Russian President came to his native city on January, 19, to mark the 75 years since breaking Nazi siege of Leningrad together with thousands of St. Petersburg residents, whose predecessors spent those cruellest winters during the blockade.
A million Leningrad residents are believed to have died of hunger and bombings while defending the city and the tragedy epitomizes Russia’s enormous suffering during WW II.
The Russian leader attended a memorial cemetery and visited a 3D panorama recreating the 1943 battle. Speaking to World War II veterans, he hailed Soviet soldiers’ “self-sacrifice and love for the Motherland.”
Vladimir Putin’s golden gene
Officials from the Russian Culture Ministry and State Duma as well as World War II veterans got a chance to watch a special closed screening of Blockade Blood, Genetics, directed by Eleonora Lukyanova, on January 18. ‘Love of Life’ by Jack London is one of the strongest novels of the modern literature but Leningrad blockade was even stronger, the director believes.
The blockade was one of the longest and deadliest one in history, it took 872 days, during which Leningrad survivors became the strongest people in the world. According to the Blockade Blood, Genetics, the horrors of Nazi siege of Leningrad left a mutation on the genetic code of the survivors that was passed on to their progeny, including a preternatural sense of civic responsibility.
Vladimir Putin, born in Leningrad, has got that golden gene. It sounds like the stuff of a bad pulp sci-fi thriller. But in Russia, the theory is getting silver-screen treatment.
