In Ukraine, they tear down Russian monuments, rename squares and streets. Even Tolstoy is targeted. But Russia is much more brutal.
Vienna/Kyiv. A young man forms his hand in a V for victory. He sits on the head of an unnamed Russian bronze worker in Kiev. And he poses for the camera. The beheading of the statue was an accident. It happened when they removed the bronze figure from the pedestal after 40 years and separated it from its Ukrainian counterpart. The working-class communist couple were part of a group of monuments above the banks of the mighty Dnieper River in Kiev.
It must bear witness to a friendship between the peoples between Russia and Ukraine that no longer exists. The war in Ukraine has irrevocably devalued the gift of the “brother people” of the Soviet days. “You don’t kill your brothers. And you don’t rape your sisters,” says Vitali Klitschko, mayor of Kiev.