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The gala event was held at the Gazprom Arena stadium in St Petersburg. The guests of honour include Great Patriotic War veterans, defenders and residents of besieged Leningrad, and home front workers. The artistic and musical director of the concert programme is Yury Bashmet.

Previously, the presidents of Russia and Belarus took part in the ceremony to unveil a memorial to the USSR civilians who fell victim of the Nazi genocide during the Great Patriotic War.

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Speeches at the gala concert

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Dear veterans, residents of Leningrad, Mr Lukashenko, friends,

Today is a special day. Its significance cannot be measured except in the feelings experienced by every person in the worn-out and heroic besieged Leningrad in January 1944.

Exactly 80 years ago, the enemy siege of Leningrad was completely lifted. Its great destiny, struggle, courage, and victory will forever remain one of the most tragic but also triumphant chapters in the history of Russia and the entire world.

The Nazi directive “On the Future of St Petersburg” explicitly stated that the city was to be besieged and, I quote, “wiped off the face of the earth.” Any possible proposals for surrender, according to this directive, “must be rejected.” But the arrogant enemy waited for capitulation in vain: the city fought back. The people of Leningrad and Red Army soldiers stood as a wall in the invaders’ path.

The Nazis acted with great cruelty and cynicism, in strict accordance with their merciless orders. They relentlessly bombarded the city, attacked it from the air and deliberately subjected almost two and a half million people to starvation and extreme, unimaginable hardships.

For 872 days, Leningrad was under siege. The metronome became the pulse of the city, and its heart was the people who, despite all the trials, continued to work and fight to save the city, their homeland, and to achieve Victory.

For 872 days, the Nazis and their followers wreaked havoc all around Leningrad: they executed and tortured defenceless citizens, killed prisoners of war, destroyed invaluable monuments, and looted museums, historical palaces, and estates.

For 872 days, a fierce battle raged on the outskirts of Leningrad. The victory was achieved by the Soviet soldiers and officers who fought for the truth, freedom, and justice, for their families, for their homes, for their Motherland.

Today we are paying tribute to their bravery and courage, honouring the memory of everyone who defended Leningrad, everyone who lived in the besieged and unyielding city. We mourn those who lost their lives in the battles on Nevsky Pyatachok, near Oranienbaum and Kronstadt, on the Pulkovo and Sinyavino heights, in the waters of Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland, and those who now rest in peace in the Smolenskoye, Serafimovskoye, Volkovskoye and Piskarevskoye cemeteries, in countless mass graves.

Let us observe a moment of silence.

(Moment of silence.)

Friends,

Today a memorial to civilians of the Soviet Union who fell victim to Nazi massacres during the Great Patriotic War was unveiled in Gatchina. The siege of Leningrad will forever remain in history as the most terrible example of the mass murder of Soviet citizens. Over one million people died of hunger and disease in the city, mostly elderly people, women, and children. This number is difficult to comprehend and imagine.

However, this is just a fraction of the atrocities unleashed on our land and people by the Nazis and those who swore allegiance to them, served them, became accomplices in the ethnic cleansing of the living space for the so called superior race, those who carried out brutal punitive operations and executions of civilians in the occupied territories.

Their actions towards the multi-ethnic Soviet people fully align with the internationally recognised definition of genocide. We will ensure that the condemnation of these crimes is unwavering in the system of international law.

The aggression our country is facing today directly shows that back in 1945, Nazism was defeated, but not eliminated. Russophobia, xenophobia, and nationalism have become weapons of revanchists in many European countries, in the Baltic states, and, unfortunately, in Ukraine.

True history is an obstacle, not a benefit to them. This is what is behind their attempts to revise and distort the reasons, the process and the outcomes of War World II, to glorify murderers and discredit heroes. They lie shamelessly and demolish monuments to those who liberated the planet from Nazism in their impotent anger, thereby renouncing their own ancestors. And this too is a crime.

We will never betray the memory and heroic deeds of our fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, or their sacrificial path to the Great Victory. All of us have relatives who fought at the front lines or worked in the rear. Their unwavering dedication and unity, and genuine love for their Motherland created a reserve of spiritual and moral strength for many generations to come.

They all hold a special place in our hearts: the heroes of the Brest Fortress and the defence of Moscow, defenders of the Volga borders and the Kursk fields, generals and privates, soldiers’ mothers, and home front workers, and, of course, the brave and resilient residents of the besieged city on the Neva River.

Today, all of Russia pays tribute to their extraordinary courage.

I congratulate you on this holiday, the day of breaking the siege of Leningrad!

President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko: Mr Putin, friends,

All of you, us, we were fortunate to be born, live, study and work in the great hero-city – the city that will forever remain in the memory of our descendants as a symbol of unbending spirit, fortitude, and courage of the Soviet people.

There is no example in the world comparable to the feat of Leningrad residents. Having overcome hunger, cold, thirst, having survived endless deaths of relatives and friends, they preserved their humanity. The fate of each of them is a story of spiritual achievement. We know this history from the memories of eyewitnesses, archival footage, newsreels and newspaper articles of those years. We understand, reread, remember, revise, and look for answers to the questions that time puts before us, questions that are complex and fundamental. We try to solve these questions even today.

The most important of them is the preservation of the truth about that war. This truth demonstrates the depth of the moral and ethical fall of those who came under the banners of Nazi Germany. It casts a black shadow over many Western European countries. That is our truth. But it is not a question of enmity with their peoples. We, the heirs of the victors, oppose the ideology of Nazism, which plagued the Germans, the French and many, many other peoples.

We also raise the issue of recognising the genocide against the Soviet people. The exact number of victims of that terrible Great Patriotic War is still unknown. Both in Belarus and Russia we still find remains of murdered mothers straining babies to their breast, infants buried alive. There are countless such stories, and the numbers are horrifying.

We are peaceful people, we do not want war. But we are again faced with the question of our civilisation’s right to live, of preserving the original values of national cultures. We do not want anything foreign, especially those benefits that were repeatedly imposed on our ancestors by fire and sword. Nevertheless, both after Victory and today we call for peaceful dialogue, but on the condition that there is respect for our historical memory and the truth about that war. We are open to any friendly steps towards both Russia and Belarus.

Friends,

Exactly 80 years ago, the complete lifting of the siege of Leningrad brought the Great Victory even closer. We have many anniversaries to celebrate the great battles and struggles that finally stopped the most brutal war in the history of mankind.

As we approached this event, Mr President and I discussed many ideas, tried to counter propaganda by discussing them, and he named one terrible idea of our vile – our already vile young people, who still cannot calm down, who have not seen war, and have not seen serious grief, who say: “We should not have defended Leningrad! We should have left it! And a huge number of lives, over a million, would have been saved.”

A dangerous trend. They, bastards, are trying to look at the present day from the past. And everything consists in the following logic: if it was not necessary to defend Leningrad, then why was it necessary to defend Moscow? It wasn't necessary to defend ourselves at all – up to the Urals, at least. “They would have come to us and made us better.” I agree with the President of Russia, who says: “But we would have lost our civilisation and we would not be living on this earth today if we had not fought for every scrap of land.”

But, as I said, they look from the past to the present. And the logic is: yes we don't have to resist, we don't have to fight. They are sharpening their swords on our borders today to come to us; they are coming again to us to make us “better.” “No need to resist.” “And where will we be?” – is the main question we are trying to answer today.

We are answering it and we will answer it – be assured of that. And let the memory of those who have left us inspire us to create for the future of our peoples, for the sake of peace. We will preserve our civilisation. You can be sure of that.

Thank you.