Ukraine's Lviv becomes first region to remove all Soviet-era monuments

Ukraine's Lviv becomes first region to remove all Soviet-era monuments

By Dan Peleschuk

The Ukrainian region of Lviv has become the country's first to remove all its Soviet-era monuments, the governor said on Tuesday, 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.

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Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said 312 monuments had been removed last year 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.

Kozytskyi 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.

Last month, authorities in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv dismantled a statue of a Red Army commander from a central boulevard.