The 872-day siege was fully lifted on January 27, 1944. By that time, no more than 800,000 of some 3 million residents of what is now St. Petersburg were still alive.
"Together with the ambassadors of the UK and Germany in Russia, Deputy Chief of Mission Stephanie Holmes laid flowers at the Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery to pay tribute to the bravery and humanity of the people of Leningrad and express our deep respect for their unimaginable suffering," the US embassy said on Telegram in Russian.
The Piskarevskoye cemetery in St. Petersburg is the final resting place of half a million people who were buried in mass graves during the war. The siege of Leningrad has become one of the most grueling and memorable sieges in human history.