"It is no longer a monument": Ministry of Culture gives the go-ahead to dismantle the Arch of Friendship of Peoples
Kyiv • UNN
The Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine has decided that the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People (Arch of Friendship of Peoples) in Kyiv is no longer a monument and can be dismantled.
The Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People (Arch of Friendship of Peoples) in Kyiv is no longer a monument and can be dismantled, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy said on Wednesday, UNN reported.
The Ministry of Culture and Information Policy has issued an order recognizing the former cultural heritage site, the Monument to the Reunification of Ukraine and Russia, located in Khreshchatyi Park in Kyiv, as not subject to entry in the State Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine. By this decision, the monument lost the status of a historical monument and can be dismantled
The Ministry of Culture noted that the Arch of Friendship of Peoples in Kyiv, erected in 1982 to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the USSR and the 65th anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917, is a symbol of Russian imperial policy and is subject to complete dismantling.
The ministry, citing the conclusion of the Expert Commission of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory on determining whether objects belong to the symbols of Russian imperial policy, noted that despite the renaming of the monument by the Kyiv City Council as the "Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People," the monument represents exclusively Soviet ideologues and connotations, and therefore poses a threat to Ukraine's national security.
The conclusion also states that the myth of the "reunification" of the two "brotherly" peoples embodied in the monument does not correspond to historical realities. And in the context of the Russian Federation's large-scale invasion of Ukraine, this myth is actively used to justify the "legitimacy" of Putin's territorial claims.
The Ministry of Culture also noted that the monument is part of the Kremlin's information and propaganda campaign to form distorted ideas among Ukrainians about the alleged "historical statelessness" of the Ukrainian people as a "fragment" of the "divided Russian people" and the "artificiality" of Ukraine as a state.
"In the public consciousness of Kyiv residents, the monument is identified with the Soviet regime, and it is no coincidence that the capital's residents call it a 'yoke'. By getting rid of the monumental 'yoke', we are freeing ourselves from the remnants of the Soviet dictatorship and Russian imperial influence," summarized Rostyslav Karandieiev, acting Minister of Culture and Information Policy.
Context
The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory saysthat the Arch of Friendship of Peoples in Kyiv symbolizes Russia's imperial policy and should be dismantled.
The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance explainedthat the expert commission only made a decision on the need to dismantle the Peoples' Friendship Arch. Implementation of this decision and taking into account the advice of the UINP expert commission depends on the city authorities and the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy.
The KCSA Department of Culture has previously stated that during a full-scale war , spending significant funds from the city budget to dismantle the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People (Arch of Friendship of Peoples) is not the most urgent issue.