Fog and Fire: Red Army Infantry in the Battle of Leningrad

June 29, 2025 - Reading time: 3 minutes

Two Soviet Red Army infantrymen push forward under foggy conditions during the Battle of Leningrad. Their mission: hold the fragile front lines against German-Finnish encirclement.

The autumn fog rolls low over the battered soil of Leningrad’s outskirts. In its pale cover — two Soviet infantrymen move forward. Crouched, alert, rifles ready. They are not part of a glorious charge or mechanized spearhead. They are the foot soldiers, the core of the Red Army, tasked with the grueling, bloody job of holding the line.

Captured by Soviet war photographer Boris Kudoyarov, this image shows a quiet yet harrowing moment from the Battle of Leningrad in the fall of 1941. The siege was tightening. German and Finnish forces had nearly encircled the city, aiming to starve it into submission. Only narrow corridors of resistance remained — and every inch had to be fought for.

These two men, like countless others, were thrown into the meatgrinder of trench assaults, forest ambushes, swamp crossings, and frozen skirmishes. There were no easy battles here. Just mud, fear, and the ever-present possibility that the man beside you wouldn’t make it another ten steps.

But retreat was not an option.
Not with Leningrad behind them.

The photo’s fog isn’t just weather — it’s atmosphere. It cloaks the battlefield in a ghostly stillness, a moment of tension before shots ring out again. In that haze, you can almost hear their breaths, feel the cold sweat under their collars, and taste the iron in the air.

This is what the defense of Leningrad looked like on the ground — raw, personal, and deadly.
A battle not of tanks or grand maneuvers, but of feet in the mud and fingers on the trigger.

📷 Technical photo data:
📸 Photographer: Boris Kudoyarov
📅 Date: Autumn 1941
📍 Location: Leningrad Oblast, USSR