On 9 August, Russia marks the Day of Military Glory — the Day of the End of the Battle of Leningrad. In 1944, one of the longest and hardest battles of the Great Patriotic War came to an end.

On 16 August in Limassol, on the renovated Heroes’ Square, a flower-laying ceremony was held. The Director of the Russian Centre of Science and Culture in Nicosia, Evgeny Eduardovich Dyomin, representatives of the Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots, and all those who came on that day paid tribute to the defenders of Leningrad.

The place was not chosen by chance. The monument has a side with the date 1940 — the year when Cypriots began leaving for the front of the Second World War. From the island, which then had fewer than four hundred thousand inhabitants, almost fourteen and a half thousand went as volunteers. They fought in Greece, in North Africa, and in Europe.

Leningrad and Cyprus were separated by thousands of kilometres, but the war was one. And the memory of it is also one, and it unites our peoples, which is why the flowers at this monument were laid so naturally.

We thank our compatriots, the Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots, the Immortal Regiment, and loyal friends of Russia in Cyprus who stood by us.

@roscentrecy