Explained | Why did Volodymyr Zelenskyy compare the Mariupol crisis to the Siege of Leningrad? 

The port city of Mariupol in Ukraine, encircled by Russian forces, faces a humanitarian crisis as resources run out amid constant shelling

The story so far: Local authorities of the besieged port city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine said on March 16 that Russians have bombed a drama theatre where nearly a thousand civilians, including women and children, were reportedly taking shelter.

The city was encircled by the Russian military on March 2 and has been facing constant bombardment, aside from being largely out of power, heating and communication services.  Late on March 16, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy compared the siege of Mariupol to the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War. “Citizens of Russia, how is your blockade of Mariupol different from the blockade of Leningrad during world war two?... We will not forget anyone whose lives were taken by the occupiers,” Mr. Zelenskyy said. 

A siege is a military strategy to surround a region from all sides, starving it of vital resources and using violent methods like bombings to force it into surrender, rather than sending troops inside to face an armed standoff. German and Finnish armies had laid siege on the USSR’s second-largest city of Leningrad (modern day St. Petersburg), on the Eastern Front of World War II, for 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944, making it one of the longest and most damaging blockades of the War.  Forces of Nazi Germany had invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941, approaching Leningrad from the West and South by September, while Germany’s ally — the Finnish army, had started moving on the city from the North. 

Despite most of the city’s population being mobilised to secure its perimeters by helping the Soviet Army to build anti-tank fortifications, Leningrad was fully encircled by late 1941, being cut off from vital rail, food, medical, communication and energy resources. All this, while it faced relentlessly frequent rounds of artillery shelling by the Germans.

The city was a strategic and political target for Germany in Operation Barbarossa — the military offensive to invade the Soviet Union.

First, it was an industrial centre hosting several arms factories. Second, its political significance was rooted in the fact that it was the former capital of Russia and the site of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. It was strategically important as besieging Leningrad would cut off the USSR from the Baltic region, and was a channel to the West, as it was around Leningrad that the Neva river’s banks met the gulf of Finland. Lastly, it was critical from a military point of view, being the base of the Russian navy’s fleet in the Baltic Sea.

During 1942 alone, 6,50,000 Leningraders had lost their lives to bombings, starvation, disease, cold and exhaustion, while mearly a million people lost their lives through the entire period of the blockade . Meanwhile, the Soviet Union registered 6,70,000 deaths during the period of the siege. German shelling and bombings had killed over 5,700 civilians and injured over 20,000 during the siege. In the second year of the siege, missions were carried out to evacuate one million of Leningrad’s children, sick, and elderly.