A minute of silence started at 12:15 p.m. Moscow time on the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow, the anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.
A minute of silence was declared by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Alexander Garden. Before that, he laid flowers at the Eternal Flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier near the Kremlin wall, as well as at each of the steles on the alley of the hero-cities and cities of military glory.
The time of the mourning ritual was not chosen by chance - it was at this moment, June 22, 1941, that the Soviet government broadcast an address to the citizens of the country, which informed them of the attack by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union.
The hard, bloody war that lasted for 1418 days and nights ended on May 9, 1945, with the complete defeat of the Nazi bloc. The Soviet Union suffered human losses and material damage from the German aggression is incomparable. History has never known such devastation, barbarity and inhumanity, as was marked by the path of Hitler's troops on Soviet soil.
According to official data, the war took the lives of 26.6 million Soviet citizens. Of these more than 8.7 million died on the battlefields, 7.42 million were deliberately exterminated by the Nazis in the occupied territories, more than 4.1 million died from the brutal conditions of the occupation regime. Another 5.27 million were taken to Germany and neighboring countries under German occupation for forced labor. Of these, slightly more than half, 2.65 million returned home, more than 450,000 immigrated, 2.16 million were killed and died in captivity.
Losses of the USSR accounted for 40 percent of all human losses in World War II. About a million Soviet soldiers gave their lives during the liberation of the peoples of Europe. According to the conclusion of the Extraordinary State Commission on the establishment and investigation of atrocities of the German fascist invaders, the occupiers completely or partially destroyed over 1.7 thousand cities and towns, over 70 thousand villages and settlements of the USSR. Direct material damage to the state and the population was 679 billion rubles (in 1941 prices).
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Creative Commons
Based on materials from RIA Novosti