'Flaschenhals' was the German land corridor to Petrokrepost (Schlüsselburg in German) on the southern shore of Lake Ladoga, to the east of Leningrad, held by Generaloberst Georg Lindemann’s 18^th Army to separate Leningrad from the rest of the USSR (1941/43).

The Soviets planned to eliminate this corridor and restore land communications with the starving city in August 1942 with a concerted effort by General Major Vasili F. Konkov’s Operational Group 'Neva' and General Leytenant Vladimir P. Sviridov’s 55^th Army of General Leytenant Leonid A. Govorov’s Leningrad Front, and General Leytenant Filipp N. Starikov’s 8^th Army, General Leytenant Andrei A. Vlasov’s 2^nd Shock Army and General Leytenant Ivan I. Fedyuninsky’s 54^th Army of General Kirill A. Meretskov’s Volkhov Front, which would cut through the corridor at its neck and also near Lake Ladoga.

This 'Sinyavino Offensive Operation' raged from 19 August to the end of September 1942, and failed totally, as did the companion effort by the Leningrad Front’s 42^nd Army, under General Leytenant Ivan F. Nikolayev, to link with General Polkovnik Vladimir Z. Romanovsky’s (from December 1943 Fedyuninsky’s) Coastal Command in the Oranienbaum beach-head to the west of Leningrad on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland.

A narrow supply corridor to the city of Leningrad was finally opened on 11/18 January 1943, when the forces of the Leningrad Front’s 67^th Army, under the command of General Leytenant Mikhail P. Dukhanov, and the Volkhov Front’s 2^nd Shock Army, under the command of Romanovsky, met at a point to the north of Sinyavino.