A new monument to revolutionary Vladimir Lenin will be unveiled in the eastern Ukrainian city of Krasnoarmeisk on Monday, Ukrainian Communists said.
“This is the first monument to Lenin to be installed in the city since Ukraine’s independence,” the spokeswoman for the Communist Party’s local branch said.
The copper sculpture will be installed on Krasnoarmeisk’s central Lenin Street to mark the 142nd anniversary of Lenin’s birth on April 20, 1870. Petro Symonenko, the leader of Ukrainian Communists, is expected to attend the ceremony.
The Donetsk Region where Krasnoarmeisk is located will host the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship in the summer, along with the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and the cities of Kharkov and Lvov. Poland will co-host the championship.
Donetsk nationalists have urged the authorities to clear the region of Communist symbols in the run-up to the event and open a Museum of Communism in Donetsk to accommodate the dismantled monuments.
Meanwhile, a Lenin monument in central Moscow was reported to have been doused with red paint and defaced with obscenities on Monday. There have been many cases of Lenin sculptures being desecrated in Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics in the past years.
