Poet Alexander Pushkin's monument dismantled in Ukraine

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
16 Dec 2022 21:52

This wouldn't be the first Russian or Soviet monument to be dismantled in Europe.

Poet Alexander Pushkin's monument dismantled in Ukraine.

Famous classical Russian poet Alexander Pushkin's monument was dismantled in Dnipro, a Ukrainian city, according to city authorities on Friday.

"Today we began dismantling all monuments related to Soviet and Russian past in accordance with the decision of the city council's executive committee. Now we are dismantling the monument to Alexander Pushkin," Mykhailo Lysenko, Dnipro's deputy mayor, said, as quoted by the local newspaper Dnipro Operativniy.

In early December, Borys Filatov, the city's mayor, said that all Russia and Soviet-related monuments will be dismantled and kept on the territory of a municipal company.

Pushkin monuments were dismantled in Kharkov, Chernivtsi, and Zhytomyr.

Dismantling Soviet-related monuments as well as renaming streets in Ukraine began in 2015 when a controversial policy regarding decommunization was passed in the country.

Recently, the Ukrainian authorities began to attack not only Soviet history but also everything related to Russia.

Attacks on Russian monuments are not new: Earlier this month, Lithuania began demolishing six stelae of the memorial to Soviet soldiers at the Antakalnis cemetery in Vilnius, the largest burial ground in the country.

UN Human Rights Committee earlier decided to place interim protection measures on the memorial, however, the destruction of the stelae proceeded. Vilnius's mayor later submitted a request to remove the Soviet-era monument from the register of cultural heritage to pave the way for taking them down.