Ukraine has torn down its largest remaining statue of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.
A crane lifted the 40-ton statue off its pedestal in the southeastern city of Zaporizhia on March 17 and placed it beside the plinth.
The 60-year-old monument fell victim to so-called “decommunization” laws.
Nearly 1,000 statues of Lenin have been toppled in Ukraine and thousands of streets, squares, towns, villages, companies, and other social entities and geographical locations must be renamed under controversial laws, passed last year, that condemn the communist Soviet and Nazi German regimes and ban any propaganda, symbols, or names associated with them.
Russia’s military-backed takeover of Crimea in March 2014 and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine since April 2014 has given much impetus to Ukraine’s efforts to break with its Soviet past.
