The anti-Russian campaign has targeted the statue of poet Alexander Pushkin in Odessa
The Ukrainian city of Odessa has announced it will go ahead with demolishing the monument to Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, even though it is in the area designated a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site.
The statue was erected in 1889 by the citizens of the Black Sea port to mark the time the celebrated artist spent in their city. Odessa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov has cited this, among other reasons, to oppose its removal.
“It is scheduled for disposal, there is a signed order for its demolition,” the regional governor, Oleg Kiper, told Ukrainian media on Friday.
Following the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev and the subsequent breakout of the war in the Donbass, Ukraine launched a “decommunization” campaign intending to remove all traces of the Soviet Union from public life. In practice, the authorities also targeted monuments and toponyms with links to Russia.