The year 2002 marked the 60th anniversary of the battle of Stalingrad,
a crucial turning point in the Great Patriotic War fought by the Soviet
Union against Nazi Germany and in World War Two at large. Continuing for
200 days and nights, this battle went down in history as the fiercest,
bloodiest and longest military operation ever recorded. There, at the walls
of Stalingrad, our homeland's destiny was at stake. And it was on the banks
of the Volga, where a countdown for Germany's defeat began. Never before
in the Second World War had the Germans sustained such a crushing defeat.
The then American President Franklin Roosevelt said that the success of
the Russians on the Volga had stopped the Nazi invasion and marked a turning
point in the Allied Nations' war against the aggressors.
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