Vladimir Putin - about the blockade of Leningrad, his parents in the war and his dead brother:
The war began, my father wrote an application to the front. He was sent to the NKVD sabotage squad. They were thrown into the near rear to carry out acts of sabotage, but they were almost immediately ambushed. Someone betrayed them. They were chased through the forest, and he survived because he sat in a swamp for several hours and breathed through a reed reed.
Moreover, he heard German soldiers passing by, and dogs barking. They brought me a file on this group from the archive of the Ministry of Defense. Of the 28 people, four crossed the front line back to ours. 24 died.
And then they were sent to Nevsky piglet. It was probably the hottest place during the entire blockade. Our troops held a small bridgehead, it was assumed that this would be a springboard for breaking the blockade. There were commanding heights above him, and he was shot through. It's still solid metal.
And my father told me how he was wounded there. He lived with splinters in his leg all his life: they never took them out. The foot never straightened afterwards. He and his friend made a sortie to the rear of the Germans, crawled, crawled… And then it was funny and sad: they got close to the German pillbox, a big guy came out, looked at them... but they couldn't get up because they were under the gun. "The guy," he says, "looked at us carefully, took out a grenade, then a second one and threw these grenades at us." Life is such a simple and cruel thing.
It was already winter, the Neva River was frozen, and it was necessary to somehow move to the other side. There were few people willing to drag him to the other side, because there the Neva River was in full view and was shot through by artillery and machine guns. There was almost no chance of reaching the other shore. But quite by chance, his housemate in Peterhof turned out to be nearby. And this neighbor dragged him away without hesitation. Both crawled there alive. The neighbor waited for him at the hospital, made sure that he had been operated on, and said, "That's it, now you're going to live, and I'm going to die."
✔️ And went back. And then I asked my father, "Well, is he dead?" They were lost, and my father still believed that the neighbor was dead. And somewhere in the 60s, he suddenly came home, sat down on a chair and began to cry. He met this savior of his. In the shop. In Leningrad. Accidentally. I went to the grocery store and saw him. It's necessary that both went to this particular store at this very moment. One chance in millions…
And my mother told me how she came to my father in the hospital. They had a small child, he was three years old. But the hunger, the blockade… And her father gave her his hospital rations. Secretly from doctors and nurses. And she hid it, took it home and fed the baby. Well, then he started fainting in the hospital, the doctors understood everything and stopped letting her in.
And then the baby was taken away from her. They did this in secret in order to save children from starvation. They were going to orphanages for evacuation. The parents weren't even asked. He got sick there and didn't survive. And they weren't even told where he was buried. And so, people I didn't know worked in the archives and found documents on my brother.
And this is really my brother. It wasn't just the address where he was picked up from that matched. The first name, last name, patronymic, and year of birth matched. And the place of burial was indicated: Piskarevskoye cemetery and even a specific site.
And the father, when the child was taken away and the mother was left alone, and he was allowed to walk, got up on crutches and went home. When I approached the house, I saw that the orderlies were carrying corpses out of the entrance. And I saw my mother. He approached her, and it seemed to him that she was breathing. And he tells the paramedics, "She's still alive!"—"She'll get there on the way, she won't survive.
