Locals question Kiev's Motherland monument makeover: Politico
3 Min Read
The hammer and sickle on the monument are being swapped out for a trident by the Ukrainian government, but not all locals are happy with the makeover.
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A view of Ukraine's Motherland Monument in Kiev Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022. (AP)
Ukrainians are committed to finding ways to show animosity toward Russia but many locals are questioning if adjusting the iconic Motherland monument to remove a hammer and sickle is the smartest way to use the country's wartime resources.
Since 1981, a 62-meter-tall female monument, known affectionately as Baba, has perched atop a hill on Kiev's right bank. She holds a 16-meter-long sword in her right hand and an eight-meter-long shield in her left, sternly staring east. But Ukraine sees a problem: the hammer and sickle, the symbols of the industrial worker and the peasant that served as the former Soviet Union's logo.
On that note, workers started dismantling the Soviet emblem on Sunday — piece by piece.
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The Ukrainian government decided earlier in July that the time had come to change the gigantic symbol of Soviet times and replace the hammer and sickle with the coat of arms of Ukraine, a trident. However, not all Ukrainians agree that spending money on an anti-Russia gesture is a good idea as Moscow increases its drone and weapon production.
When you can’t win a war, you instead distract the public by fighting with the ghosts of the heroic past through symbolic “cancel culture”: Kiev removed parts of the Soviet insignia from a key WWII monument Motherland in the Ukrainian territory.
— Nina 🐙 Byzantina (@NinaByzantina) July 31, 2023
The government plans to replace… pic.twitter.com/hjY2KxAOAL
Viktor Prylypenko, a Ukrainian military medic, said work on the Motherland memorial was "definitely impractical" since "the army has a significant shortage of strike and reconnaissance drones." However, such spending also hurts army morale. This is not a "penny street renaming," but rather "costs millions of hryvnias."
Prylypenko said that the view from the frontline is that changing the statue is “a waste of money," also, "It is also a symptom of the lack of creating a state military strategy for civilian spending."
“We see how statesmen often go abroad to ask not only for weapons, but also for financial assistance, and right away, we see the waste of taxpayers’ money. If there was a strategy, we would see news on our channels about the inventions of our scientists for the military, the launch of production lines for domestic military equipment, the construction of reliable shelters … the involvement of businesses in the construction of shelters in residential complexes, the opening of local production lines for basic things such as masks, which are still woven by the hands of volunteers, the creation of quick-installation dugout modules, female engineers, etc.”
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Furthermore, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy has repeatedly said that the state has not spent a single hryvnia on the project, which is anticipated to cost 28 million hryvnias (about €700,000), and that funding is being provided by large corporations.
“So, if it is not money from the budget, it means you can spend it anyhow you want? This is €700,000. This is more than 2,000 FPV drones, for example, 240 sniper rifles, 350 thermal imagers of good quality, and much more. Why changing the coat of arms of the USSR to a trident right now is a more urgent need than strengthening the technical support of the army is a mystery to me,” Diana Stavska, a dentist from Kyiv, who also buys supplies from volunteers for the Ukrainian army, wrote in a Facebook post.
