Putin marks 70th anniversary of lifting of Leningrad siege

President Vladimir Putin said Monday the memory of Russia's heroism and sacrifice during World War II will endure as his country marked the 70th anniversary of the lifting of the Nazi siege of Leningrad. Putin participated in commemorative ceremonies in his native Saint Petersburg, known as Leningrad under the Soviet Union, saying the world should never forget "the courage and heroism of the Soviet people and residents of Leningrad". The two-and-a-half-year assault is considered the most lethal siege in history, with German wartime commanders calculating that starvation was their most effective weapon against Leningrad's inhabitants and defenders. Putin met war veterans and survivors of the siege and laid flowers at memorials for the dead. "Three hundred and sixty thousand  civilians died in Leningrad over a period of just four months from the end of 1941 to the start of 1942," Putin told veterans. "Britain lost nearly the same amount in the entire World War II. "Can you imagine the difference between the victims that the Soviet Union and other countries of the world laid on the altar of common victory?" The 872-day siege by Nazi forces between September 1941 and January 1943 is seared into the national consciousness as one of the darkest moments in Russian history. Taking Leningrad was a strategic part of Adolf Hitler's ultimately failed plan to eliminate the Soviet Union as a threat to Nazi Germany's domination of Europe. On Monday, German President Joachim Gauck wrote to Putin to express Berlin's "deep sadness and shame" at the siege, saying that Germany recognised its "historical responsibility for the suffering inflicted on the people of Leningrad". Gauck acknowledged that starving the besieged population into submission had been the Nazi strategy during the siege. "The monstrous scope of human suffering still leaves us aghast," he said. 'I can hardly hold back tears' Surrounded by several dozen survivors of the siege, Putin earlier visited the famed Piskaryovskoe Memorial Cemetery, the main memorial to the victims of the siege. Putin honoured the memory of his elder brother who died during the blockade and was buried at the cemetery in a mass grave, the Kremlin said. The president also laid flowers at a memorial on the banks of the Neva River marking the site of one of the most important battles during the siege in which his father participated as a soldier. In the evening Putin watched the premiere of a new ballet about the siege, called "Requiem." The blockade of the former imperial capital claimed the lives of more than a million people, according to historians. Most of them died of hunger and exhaustion during an extremely cold winter at the beginning of the siege from 1941 to 1942 when rations fell to just 125 grams of bread per person for white-collar workers and municipal heating was switched off. People were forced to eat pets, earth and glue and some even resorted to cannibalism. Dead bodies littered the streets for days as the survivors were too weak to bury the deceased. In the run-up to the anniversary the local authorities put together an exhibition reconstructing part of a street in the city centre with siege-related artifacts like sandbags, boarded-up windows, theatre bills and old cars and trolleybuses. "When I look at the chronicles and the pictures I can barely hold back tears," said Natalia Zvereva, 60, who brought her grandchild to see the exhibition. "It was such an awful time." Sergei Stepanenko, 45, added: "My grandmother survived the blockade. She could not talk about it. It was too horrible."