"My breathing mom was among corpses": Putin recalls his parents' WWII ordeal

Vladimir Putin has written a column (something he very rarely does), recalling the stories of his parents who survived the hardships of the Leningrad blockade, his dead brother and World War II with very personal details.

Putin's father, Vladimir, joined a small sabotage group under the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), whose mission was to blow up bridges and rail lines near St Petersburg (then Leningrad), the Russian president recalled in his column in the "Russian Pioneer" journal. Of the 28 members in the group, 24 died in battles with the Nazis near St Petersburg.

One day, German soldiers were chasing them in the woods. Putin's father survived because he hid in a swamp for several hours.

"And he [Putin's father] said that, when submerged in the swamp and breathing through a reed, he heard German soldiers passing by, just a few steps away from him and he heard dogs barking."

His father recalled how he sustained an injury, which invalided him for the rest of his life because he had to live with parts of a grenade in his leg.

Putin's dad, anti-Nazi saboteur
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Putin-Sr was making a sortie behind Nazi lines together with his fellow fighters. However, they suddenly encountered a German soldier.

"The man looked at us carefully. He took a grenade, then another, and threw them at us," Putin recalls his father's words.

"Life is such a simple thing and cruel," the Russian president concluded.

When Putin's father woke up, he couldn't walk and there was another problem -- he had to reach his group stationed on the other bank of the vast Neva River which was frozen.

"The Neva was constantly monitored and exposed to fire by artillery and machine guns. There was almost no way of reaching the opposite bank."

However, by chance Putin-Sr met his neighbor, who despite enemy fire managed to get him to a local hospital. The fragments of the grenade were lodged in his leg and the doctors preferred not to touch them in order to save the limb.

The neighbor waited for him [Putin-Sr] in the hospital, and after seeing that his surgery had been successful he told him: "All right, now you're going to live, and I am heading off to die."

However, they both survived the war, though Putin's father thought his savior had been dead for a decade. In the 60s, they met by chance in a shop and there was a tearful reunion.

Putin's elder brother was born during World War II. To support his little son, Putin's father secretly passed his own hospital rations to his wife. But when he started to faint in the hospital "doctors and nurses understood what was happening," said Putin, recalling his parents' stories.