Russian author and war veteran Daniil Granin, 98

Daniil Granin, a Russian author who wrote a chronicle of the Nazi siege of Leningrad and several popular novels, has died at the age of 98, according to Russian authorities.

Granin, a Second World War veteran whose writings made him a moral authority for many in Russia, died in hospital in St Petersburg.

President Vladimir Putin offered condolences to his family, praising Granin as a “great thinker” and a “man of great spiritual strength”.

Granin, who was trained as an industrial engineer, joined the Red Army when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and fought until the end of the war.

He published his first work in 1949 and wrote several novels inspired by his experience as an engineer, describing scientists fighting for their inventions against stolid bureaucracy.

Several of Granin’s books were turned into movies, earning him wider popularity.

In the 1970s, he published A Book Of The Blockade, containing horrifying accounts by survivors of the Nazi siege of Leningrad.

In 2014, Granin – 95 at the time – made a powerful, widely quoted speech about the siege of Leningrad at the German parliament on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Granin was buried on Saturday at Komarovo Cemetery outside St Petersburg.

Daniil Granin wrote a seminal work on the siege of Leningrad.