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Kyiv city authorities have removed a statue of Russian writer Alexander Pushkin that stood on one of the city’s main streets.
“Pushkin is not a part of Ukrainian culture,” announced the adviser to the mayor of Kyiv, Dmytro Belotserkovets.
The Ukrainian government withdrew the statue from the state register of monuments of national importance on November 10, allowing it to be dismantled.
During the night of November 7, unknown activists wrote the words “decolonization cannot be stopped” across the base of the statue and threw red paint over Pushkin’s face.
A number of other monuments to Russian and Soviet figures were also removed from the list, including a statue of Red Army commander Mykola Shchors in Kiev and a statue of Russian nobleman Prince Vorontsov in Odessa.
The government also delisted the Pushkin monuments in Zhytomyr and Kharkiv, and both were removed.
“A small step for the Kyiv community, a big step for Ukraine,” one person wrote in a comment below Belotserkovets’ post.
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