Now it can be dismantled: Ministry of Culture deprives the People's Friendship Arch in Kyiv of the status of a historical monument.

The Ministry of Culture has issued an order to deprive the People's Friendship Arch of the status of a historical monument. Accordingly, this monument can now be completely dismantled.

This was reported by the press service of the ministry. On April 26, 2022, the sculptural part of the monument was removed from the center of the capital.

"By its order, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy recognized the former cultural heritage site, the Monument to the Reunification of Ukraine with Russia, located in Kyiv in Khreshchatyi Park, as not subject to entry in the State Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine. By this decision, the monument has lost the status of a historical monument and can be dismantled," the statement said.

The Ministry of Culture recalled that the People's Friendship Arch in Kyiv was erected in 1982 to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the USSR and the 65th anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917. It is a symbol of Russian imperial policy and is subject to complete dismantling. Despite being renamed the "Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People" by the Kyiv City Council, the monument represents exclusively Soviet ideologues and connotations and therefore poses a threat to Ukraine's national security.

The Expert Commission of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory provided the relevant conclusion on determining whether objects belong to the symbols of Russian imperial policy. The document 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. It is also 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," the press service added.

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