War in Ukraine: Kiev destroys a historical monument dedicated to the Ukrainian-Russian friendship
Steph Deschamps / April 27, 2022
Kiev City Hall on Tuesday demolished a historic Soviet-era monument celebrating the friendship between Ukraine and Russia, after Moscow invaded the country two months ago.
AFP journalists saw the head of one of the two figures of this statue representing a Russian worker and a Ukrainian worker who hold together in their hands a Soviet symbol with the inscription Friendship between peoples, that a crane was trying to dismantle in the center of Kiev.
Eight meters of metal of the so-called +friendship of the two peoples+ dismantled. And what is symbolic (...) the head of the Russian worker fell, said on Telegram the mayor of the Ukrainian capital, Vitali Klitschko.
As they were unable to pull the monument out with the crane, the workers then sawed off the statue's legs to remove it from its base.
Not without difficulty, but the sculpture (...) was dismantled tonight, Klitschko said in a second message, saying it was a symbol that the occupier will be driven out of Ukraine.
This massive bronze statue was installed during the Soviet era, in 1982, to commemorate the reunification of Russia and Ukraine.