MOSCOW. Jan 27 (Interfax) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has congratulated Great Patriotic War veterans and residents of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region on the 68th anniversary of the lifting of the Leningrad Blockade, the Kremlin website reported on Friday.
"The Leningrad Blockade was fully lifted 68 years ago. We revere the bravery of the defenders and residents of the city on the Neva. Those who set for the whole world an example of strength, unbreakable will, and allegiance to the fatherland," the president said in his congratulatory telegram posted on the Kremlin site.
In his congratulatory address, Medvedev called for the tragic events of those days to be prevented.
"Our duty is keep the memory of those 900 terrible days and pass it on to our children and grandchildren. To do everything possible to ensure that one of the most tragic events in the history of mankind never happens again," the document says.
The blockade of the city, which lasted 879 days from September 8, 1941, until January 27, 1944, was broken on January 18, 1943, when the first trains reached the city from the "Mainland." But the blockade was only finally ended a year later, on January 27, 1944, when Nazi troops were pushed away from the city.
Events commemorating Leningrad's liberation from the blockade will be held on its 68th anniversary.