Valentina Matvienko: We Cannot Forget People who Defended Leningrad

Speaker of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, Chairperson of the IPA CIS Council Valentina Matvienko addressed the residents and veterans of St. Petersburg on the occasion of the anniversary of the beginning of the Siege of Leningrad.

“The Siege was one of the large-scale tragedies of the Great Patriotic War, which claimed thousands of lives. Even years later, we cannot calmly talk about it, we cannot but remember those who managed to defend Leningrad. Its heroic defence had great military-strategic and moral significance,” Valentina Matvienko said in her address.

The Head of the Upper House of the Russian Parliament took part in a solemn mourning ceremony held today at the Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery in St Petersburg.

The ceremony was attended by a delegation of the IPA CIS Council Secretariat. The delegation consisted of the Deputy Secretary General of the IPA CIS Council – Plenipotentiary Representative of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia Hayk Chilingaryan, Deputy Secretary General of the IPA CIS Council – Plenipotentiary Representative of the Jogorku Kenesh of the Kyrgyz Republic Nurbek Satvaldiev, Deputy Secretary General of the IPA CIS Council – Plenipotentiary Representative of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation Irina Sokolova, Deputy Heads of the of the IPA CIS Council Secretariat Alexey Dolzhikov and Elena Kuzina and other members of the Secretariat.

The delegation laid flowers at the monument “Mother Motherland”, as well as at the memorial plaques erected in memory of the natives of the USSR republics who fell in the battles for Leningrad.