Within the freezing, snow-laden streets of Leningrad, households carried lifeless kinfolk – nearly mummified by brutal temperatures of minus 43C – down the steps of darkened tenement blocks.
Some seen simply how gentle these corpses, ravaged by starvation, have been as they loaded them on sleds and dragged them alongside the highway like bin baggage to mass assortment factors.
Ravenous gravediggers didn’t have the energy to interrupt the frozen winter floor and so mechanical diggers created huge gaping pits, lodging for 1000’s of nameless cadavers.
There had been so many fatalities all through town within the area of weeks that the lifeless needed to queue as much as be buried, their our bodies stacked like logs.
One such physique was that of a good-looking, dignified lady in her 30s. It was assumed that she had, like so many others, died of hunger.
Her identify was Maria Ivanovna Shelomova Putina – the mom of Vladimir Putin.
But – in accordance with one account – on that silent avenue of tall nineteenth century terraced residence buildings, beneath a darkish indigo sky, neighbours heard the faintest of moans coming from among the many lifeless.
A pair of footwear poking out from the pile of immobile flesh have been seen to twitch. Miraculously, after surviving on hunger rations for months, Putin’s mom was not lifeless and neighbours pulled her away from the encompassing our bodies.
An estimated 1.5million troopers and civilians alike died within the hellish apocalypse that was the Siege of Leningrad – essentially the most murderous blockade in historical past. Vladimir Putin’s mom survived the siege after narrowly avoiding being buried alive. Pictured: Putin aged 5 along with his mom Maria Ivanovna
This Second World Warfare siege, which lasted some 900 days, from 1941 to 1944, illustrated how resilient humankind could be when confronted with the darkest extremes of need and struggling. Certainly, for a lot of inside town – together with the Putins – it modified their understanding of human nature itself. And, in some methods, the spectre of all that struggling casts its shadow over Russia, and the broader world, to at the present time
Simply take a look at the nightmare landscapes of warfare in Ukraine as troops combat to the demise over each inch of territory and the size of the struggling that Putin and his forces have inflicted upon the civilian inhabitants, writes Sinclair McKay
Pictured: Vladimir Putin as a toddler on the lap of his mom Maria Shelomovam and his grandmother
Maria Putina was one of many fortunate ones.
An estimated 1.5million troopers and civilians alike died within the hellish apocalypse that was the Siege of Leningrad – essentially the most murderous blockade in historical past.
This Second World Warfare siege, which lasted some 900 days, from 1941 to 1944, illustrated how resilient humankind could be when confronted with the darkest extremes of need and struggling.
Certainly, for a lot of inside town – together with the Putins – it modified their understanding of human nature itself.
And, in some methods, the spectre of all that struggling casts its shadow over Russia, and the broader world, to at the present time.
Simply take a look at the nightmare landscapes of warfare in Ukraine as troops combat to the demise over each inch of territory and the size of the struggling that Putin and his forces have inflicted upon the civilian inhabitants.
Leningrad’s ordeal started weeks after Hitler’s forces invaded Russia in the summertime of 1941.
That winter of hunger – nonetheless commemorated by town and Vladimir Putin yearly in large ceremonies – stays nearly past comprehension. Pictured: Russian President Vladimir Putin lays flowers on the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery throughout a ceremony marking the eightieth anniversary of a breakthrough within the siege of Leningrad
Valdimir Putin’s mom and father loved going to the theatre within the late Nineteen Thirties to see town’s much-loved comic Arkady Raikin – the one man in Russia with an obvious licence to poke enjoyable at Soviet officialdom. Pictured: Vladimir Putin, proper, poses for {a photograph} along with his dad and mom Maria and Vladimir Putin in 1985
Throughout the siege of Leningrad moms with infants suffered the agony of not even with the ability to categorical milk: one was even pushed to chop her arm open to let her child suck the blood. In some circumstances – with fathers away preventing, and their sickly moms compelled to fill the vacancies in factories – younger youngsters have been adopted by the authorities. Pictured: Maria Shelomova 17 October 1911 – 6 July 1998
Because the three million troops assembled for Operation Barbarossa rampaged throughout the steppes of jap Europe – burning, maiming and slaughtering as they went – tons of of 1000’s of German troopers in Military Group North encircled the proud, lovely metropolis that we now as soon as extra know as St Petersburg.
Town – with its amazingly vibrant baroque palaces, church buildings with golden domes and winding canals – was a product of the imaginative and prescient of Tsar Peter the Nice, who had it hewn from frozen marshlands on the tip of the Baltic Sea in 1703.
It was meant to be Russia’s ‘window on the West’.
St Petersburg was quickly famed internationally for its ballet, wealthy poetry, and beautiful music.
This remained the case after the 1917 Russian revolution, when it was renamed Leningrad.
And even by way of the phobia of Stalin’s purges within the Nineteen Thirties – when 1000’s of innocents have been wrenched from their properties at midnight and consigned to slave labour camps, or just murdered – there was additionally, extremely, boisterous comedy.
Together with her husband, Vladimir Spiridonovich (pictured) , preventing with the Pink Military exterior town who finally sustained accidents from a grenade blast to his legs, Maria Putina was one such mom who had her baby eliminated. Pictured: Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin 23 February 1911 – 2 August 1999
Valdimir Putin’s mom and father, by the way, loved going to the theatre within the late Nineteen Thirties to see town’s much-loved comic Arkady Raikin – the one man in Russia with an obvious licence to poke enjoyable at Soviet officialdom.
However by the Second World Warfare, town was additionally one of many centres of the Soviet Union’s huge armaments trade: tanks and planes have been assembled in huge cathedrals of producing. Hitler at first deliberate to beat Leningrad.
However then he determined it will be higher if town – and its individuals – have been merely worn out.
The Wehrmacht occupiers within the countryside that surrounded it lower off all the availability routes that served as St Petersburg’s veins and arteries – the roads and the railways – thus isolating it from the remainder of Russia.
Each night time, the Luftwaffe launched horrible bombing assaults that devastated residence blocks and factories, leaving residents disorientated with sleeplessness.
At a commemoration service at a St Petersburg cemetery a number of years in the past, Putin mentioned: ‘I don’t know the place my very own brother is buried, whom I by no means noticed, by no means knew.’ He spoke of how his mom had been ‘laid out with the corpses’. Pictured: Destruction brought on by Russian bomb strikes on Kostiantynivka on March 21
One such bombing raid in September 1941 destroyed the huge timber-framed warehouses that held town’s stockpiles of non-perishable meals: every thing from pasta to lentils to sugar.
From that time onwards, the starvation started.
That winter of hunger – nonetheless commemorated by town and Vladimir Putin yearly in large ceremonies – stays nearly past comprehension.
Because the darkish days of December arrived in 1941, such every day rations as there have been concerned heavy black bread: little greater than a handful for manufacturing unit staff, much less for different residents.
These rations shrank because the weeks wore on – some receiving a portion the scale of a taking part in card to see them by way of 24 hours.
With a purpose to safe that tiny every day ration, residents needed to begin queueing at bakeries at 4.30am. The traces have been already snaking down the streets.
We can’t make any assumptions about how his psychological panorama of the world, and of warfare, was fashioned, though it’s unattainable to not marvel, writes Sinclair McKay. Pictured: Ukrainian firefighters put out the fireplace at a storehouse following a Russian assault in Odesa on March 21, 2025
Sometimes there have been whispered rumours of black market horse-meat: determined mass brawls would escape.
As soon as loving households, in communal residences shared with different households, grew to become snarling enemies: screaming and swearing.
Toddlers scrabbled instinctively between floorboards with tiny fingers within the hope of discovering dropped dry grains of rice.
Youngsters and fogeys alike suspected every different of taking greater than their truthful shares.
The snows got here and, after the Nazis bombed the facility stations, town was plunged into stuttering darkness. The individuals needed to break up furnishings and bannisters for gas to burn.
The psychological modifications – brought on by brains slowly being starved – have been accompanied by what appeared essentially the most uncanny transformations.
Regardless of the starvation, bellies swelled (a situation referred to as oedema, the place the physique can not course of waste fluid, and it builds up across the organs).
Flesh would darken in patches; as if the blood itself was too apathetic to maneuver correctly. Some individuals grew to become yellow, others purple; some turned mint inexperienced.
How may a person with such an intimate data of what the First World Warfare poet Wilfred Owen known as ‘the pity of warfare’ go on to inflict such a nightmare upon so many ladies and little youngsters in Ukraine?, asks Sinclair McKay. Pictured: Residents stand in entrance of a broken residential constructing following bomb strikes on town of Kostiantynivka on March 21
Gums would recede and bleed.
Eyes would seem to develop into bigger.
Then there have been ‘the ants’; this was the alarming sensation that there have been bugs transferring round beneath the flesh: the quivering outcomes of the physique starting to eat itself.
Adults caught sight of themselves in mirrors and recoiled with horror.
Moms with infants suffered the agony of not even with the ability to categorical milk: one was even pushed to chop her arm open to let her child suck the blood.
In some circumstances – with fathers away preventing, and their sickly moms compelled to fill the vacancies in factories – younger youngsters have been adopted by the authorities.
Together with her husband, Vladimir Spiridonovich, preventing with the Pink Military exterior town who finally sustained accidents from a grenade blast to his legs, Maria Putina was one such mom who had her baby eliminated.
There was a perception that the Communist state may present extra common nourishment in particular establishments. It couldn’t.
Leningrad’s ordeal started weeks after Hitler’s forces invaded Russia in the summertime of 1941. This picture exhibits broken homes on Pushkarhaya avenue after a German raid in the course of the battle of Leningrad
In early 1942, the Putins got the tragic information that their toddler son Viktor had died of diphtheria.
In most different circumstances, the trigger was starvation.
Little Viktor – who would have been Vladimir Putin’s older brother – was one in every of uncountable numbers of toddlers consigned to these mass burial pits.
Elsewhere, with solely the barest scraps coming into town through cargo planes (the Luftwaffe had mastery of the skies), Leningrad’s scientists needed to discover a approach of bulking out bread with edible cattle-feed.
Folks boiled leather-based belts and briefcases down and drank the broth. They stripped partitions for the wallpaper paste.
Households have been taking a look at home pets in new methods.
Youngsters would return house to seek out beloved Irish setters – a breed first popularised by Tsar Akexander II – had been killed to make stew. One household caught and grilled their pet cat.
‘It was very tasty,’ confessed their younger son. At night time, males went out into the frozen darkness to catch rats: their blood was heat, they’d flesh. They have been finest served fried.
In early 1942, the Putins got the tragic information that their toddler son Viktor had died of diphtheria. Vladimir Putin Jr was born right into a metropolis of mass graves and he by no means did discover out the place his older brother was laid to relaxation
Most determined have been the refugees from the countryside who had raced into town forward of the murderous Nazi advance solely to seek out that, with out a ration card, they’d no entry to meals.
This was a demise sentence.
Our bodies sometimes began going lacking. Some who stole corpses – or lower human flesh off the numerous cadavers that lay the place they’d fallen within the metropolis’s streets – have been moms whose solely need was to maintain their youngsters alive.
However in some tenement blocks, there have been even darker tales. Murderers who stalked their victims by way of the snow, earlier than stabbing them, hacking their our bodies aside and consuming their flesh.
Such situations would later be hushed up.
But the siege additionally demonstrated one other side of human nature: a rare capability for invention. Town lies near Lake Ladoga, an unlimited freshwater inland sea.
And within the depths of that harsh winter, it froze over so thickly that convoys of vans have been despatched throughout the ice from the unoccupied east of the nation.
Negotiating the featureless panorama of the frozen lake was made potential by younger ladies who stood holding crimson flags at common intervals to indicate the best way.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visits a frontline, amid Russia’s assault on Ukraine in Donetsk area on March 22
Ukrainian rescuers working on the website of a drone assault in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, late 21 March 2025
The convoys introduced provides throughout a 35-mile ice highway and on their return journeys took evacuees. Not surprisingly, it grew to become referred to as ‘The Street of Life’.
Come the spring, Pink Military fightbacks restored a number of the metropolis’s provide traces.
The ruthless Wehrmacht bombing and shelling continued however many 1000’s of essentially the most weak have been evacuated and rations for many who remained have been returned to ranges adequate to take care of human life.
By the summer season of 1942, town’s Philharmonic orchestra was able to stun the world with essentially the most wonderful present of defiance.
The St Petersburg composer Dmitri Shostakovich had written his Seventh Symphony particularly for the besieged metropolis. The musicians had spent the winter ravenous and exhausted however they performed as if their lives depended upon it.
The symphony was broadcast, through radio, all over the world and was even heard by the Wehrmacht troopers entrenched across the metropolis.
Years later, two of them, by then East German residents, instructed the conductor Karl Eliasberg that they might not consider the brutalised metropolis may summon such magnificence.
The siege continued for one more 18 months however the tides of warfare had turned. The Pink Military lastly compelled the Wehrmacht into retreat in January 1944.
With one million civilians killed in Leningrad, how may the survivors ever discover any sort of peace?
Pictured: Ukrainian members of the armed forces listening to a live performance
In 1952, Maria Shelomova Putina, 41, and her husband Vladimir, now a railway employee, welcomed a brand new baby.
Vladimir Putin Jr was born right into a metropolis of mass graves and he by no means did discover out the place his older brother was laid to relaxation.
At a commemoration service at a St Petersburg cemetery a number of years in the past, Putin mentioned: ‘I don’t know the place my very own brother is buried, whom I by no means noticed, by no means knew.’ He spoke of how his mom had been ‘laid out with the corpses’.
We can’t make any assumptions about how his psychological panorama of the world, and of warfare, was fashioned, though it’s unattainable to not marvel.
We should additionally keep in mind that thousands and thousands of his fellow St Petersburgers didn’t develop as much as develop into despotic war-mongers.
In reality, some later psychological research discovered that siege survivors – known as Blokadniki – had uncommon ranges of empathy.
However the siege cemented a component of paranoia in Putin’s understanding of the world and historical past.
The puzzle stays: how may a person with such an intimate data of what the First World Warfare poet Wilfred Owen known as ‘the pity of warfare’ go on to inflict such a nightmare upon so many ladies and little youngsters in Ukraine?
