Monument to Chkalov is being dismantled in Kyiv

MOSCOW, January 25 – RIA Novosti. The monument to the Soviet pilot Valery Chkalov is being dismantled in Kyiv, there is a discussion of the dismantling of the monument to the Soviet general Nikolai Vatutin, said Dmitry Belotserkovets, an adviser to the mayor of the Ukrainian capital and a deputy of the Kyiv City Council.

According to the statement of Belotserkovets, the decision on the monument to Chkalov has already been made, and the fate of the monument to Vatutin is still being debated.

“A monument to Chkalov will be dismantled in Kyiv. But at the same time, the profile expert commission under the Ministry of Culture is doing everything so that the Verkhovna Rada has a monument to Vatutin,” Belotserkovets wrote on his page on the social network.

According to the official, the commission discussed the issue of depriving the monuments of the status of objects of cultural heritage, during which a positive decision was made on the monument to Chkalov. The Vatutin monument is also proposed to be included in the list of objects of monumental heritage, which will prevent its demolition.

Belotserkovets appealed to the Minister of Culture of Ukraine Oleksandr Tkachenko with a request to intervene and assist in the demolition of the monuments.

The dismantling of monuments related to Soviet history, as well as the renaming of streets, began in Ukraine in 2015, when a law on decommunization was passed. Recently, the Ukrainian authorities have begun to fight not only with Soviet history, but with everything connected with Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier that the Ukrainian authorities have been pursuing a policy of aggressive de-Russification and forced assimilation for many years.