Ukraine’s Lviv becomes first region to remove all Soviet-era monuments
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A worker dismantling the Monument to the War Glory of the Soviet Army following a decision by the local authorities in Lviv, Ukraine, in 2021.
PHOTO: REUTERS
KYIV - The Ukrainian region of Lviv has become the country’s first to remove all its Soviet-era monuments, the governor said on Jan 30, part of a broader wartime push to erase all traces of Russian rule.
Ukraine launched a “decommunisation” campaign after a 2014 revolution toppled a pro-Moscow president and has continued the effort as it fights off Russia’s near two-year invasion.
Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said 312 monuments had been removed in 2023 in his western Lviv region, which borders Poland, by activists and local residents.
“Not a kopek from the regional budget was spent on toppling these ‘idols’,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
He included an image of a demolished concrete statue, but did not identify it.
Thousands of streets and settlements in Ukraine, which declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, have also been renamed in recent years as part of the drive.
The mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, proposed last week renaming the centrally located Pushkin Street, a nod to the Russian author, after prominent a Ukrainian philosopher.
In December, the authorities in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv dismantled a statue of a Red Army commander from a central boulevard. REUTERS
