In addition, around forty monuments and commemorative signs will be removed to be transferred to the Museum of Totalitarianism.
Article written by
Posted on 5/14/2022 4:09 PM Updated on 5/14/2022 5:15 PM
Reading time: 1 min
The Arch of Friendship of Peoples, an emblematic Soviet monument in downtown Kyiv, became the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People on Saturday following a decision by the City Council. “Today the city council decided to ‘decommunize’ the name of the Ark of Friendship of Peoples. From now on it will be the Ark of the Freedom of the Ukrainian people,” announced the capital’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko by telegram on Saturday, May 14 .
Elected municipal officials have also “approved a list of more than 40 monuments and emblems to be removed from the capital’s streets and buildings in order to transmit them to the Museum of Totalitarianism,” he added. If many places or monuments are to be renamed, Vitali Klitschko said that the process of naming new names would take time and would involve “specialists”, especially historians, “so as not to make a hasty decision”.
The Arch of Friendship of Nations is an imposing metal arch, 35 meters high, erected in 1982 in a park in the city center. It was part of the same complex as the sculpture of the two Russian and Ukrainian workers that were dismantled last month. In 2018, anti-Russian activists put a trompe l’oeil sticker on it, showing a tear down the center of the sheet, to highlight the breakdown in relations between the two countries.
Many residents of Kiev are demanding the renaming of other symbols, the names of which are associated with Russia or Belarus, its ally. The Kiev metro therefore organized an online consultation, where voters voted to move the station “Minsk” to “Warsaw”, that of “Beresteïska”, the Belarusian city of Brest, to “Boutcha” or even the station “Place Leon Tolstoï” to be renamed. Station in “Vassyl Stous”, named after the Ukrainian poet who died in the Gulag.