Ukraine accelerates campaign to remove Soviet-era monuments

Ukraine has doubled down on efforts to erase all traces of Russian rule amid a full-scale invasion by Kremlin troops, now nearing its two-year mark.

Ukrainian officials pressed on with a campaign to remove Soviet-era monuments on Saturday as authorities in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv dismantled a statue of a Red Army commander from a central boulevard.

TOPSHOT - People gather around a statue depicting Red Army commander Mykola Shchors after it was dismantled as Ukraine's decommunization continues, in Kyiv on December 9, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP)(AFP)

Ukraine has doubled down on efforts to erase all traces of Russian rule amid a full-scale invasion by Kremlin troops, now nearing its two-year mark.

Municipal workers on Saturday carefully hoisted the hulking statue of Mykola Shchors, a Soviet field commander during the Russian Civil War, off its pedestal.

The structure had occupied a prominent spot on a central artery named after Ukraine's national poet.

Onlookers stopped to watch and photograph as a giant crane lowered the horse-riding Shchors onto a flatbed truck.

"We need to educate our youth so that they know our history," said Zoya Kobyliukova, 82, who described communism as a "utopia" that led to many people being killed.

"They're doing the right thing to be taking him down."

Kyiv city councillor Leonid Yemets told Reuters the statue would be moved to a museum.

Authorities in Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odesa dismantled a prominent statue of Catherine the Great last year after a months-long campaign by activists.

Thousands of Ukrainian streets and settlements have also been renamed in recent years as part of a de-communisation campaign launched after the 2014 Maidan Revolution, which toppled a pro-Russian leader.