Trams in Warsaw. File photoUN, 16 JulAt an informal meeting of the UN Security Council, Sergei Leonidchenko, adviser to the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the UN, told his Polish colleague how the Polish authorities demolished a monument to Soviet soldiers, under which there was a grave where his relative was also buried. On Friday, at the initiative of Albania and Poland, an informal meeting of the UN Security Council was held, devoted to the problem of cultural objects of Ukraine. Representatives of both states accused Russia of destroying the cultural values of Ukraine. Leonidchenko denied these accusations and drew attention to the policy of the Polish authorities waging war on monuments to Soviet soldiers-liberators. «I will tell my family story. My mother's uncle Nikolai Pavlovich Barbukov war with the Nazis from the first day, when he was only 19. He fought for countless days in the reconnaissance unit.He was awarded a medal for bravery, but he could no longer receive it, as he died in battle just a few months before the day of victory. He was buried with his comrades near the Polish village they liberated, where they erected a modest monument with the names of Soviet heroes,» Leonidchenko said. According to him, the Poles from this village even sent small gifts to Nikolai's mother as a token of gratitude — «at least until the monument was not demolished, the bodies were not exhumed and reburied in a mass grave without name plates».
In Ukraine, they are looking for ways to decommunize the Motherland monument. «This happened as part of a large-scale campaign by the Polish Russophobic authorities to delete all the heroic deeds of Soviet soldiers from the history of their country,» the diplomat said. He called the policy of the Polish authorities blasphemy and a crime against the truth. These attempts, however, are doomed to failure. The memory of the soldiers will be preserved by their families, like my own. After all, in our country there is hardly a family that would not have lost loved ones in the war or otherwise suffered from the Nazi plague. The memory of Soviet heroes will to live in simple Polish families, as if from the same village,” he said. How Soviet monuments are being demolished in UkraineToday, one can observe cultural and historical amnesia in Ukraine. At first, the disease manifested itself in mild and moderate forms — hooliganism and vandalism in relation to the monuments of the Soviet era. Then, after the Euromaidan, the disease turned into a severe chronicle — in Ukraine they scrupulously counted and began to demolish everything that has at least some relation to Russia.
