MOSCOW, Dec 24 Vandals desecrated monuments in Poltava, Ukraine to the Soviet general and Hero of the USSR Nikolai Vatutin and the hero of the Polotsk defense Alexei Zygin, having outlined the monuments with red paint, the Poltavshchina publication reports on Saturday.
According to the publication, the day before, the deputies of the Poltava City Council did not support the dismantling of monuments to the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, the Soviet general and Hero of the USSR Nikolai Vatutin, and the hero of the Polotsk defense Alexei Zygin.
«On the night of December 23-24 in the center of Poltava, unidentified people painted over the monuments to Zygin and Vatutin with red paint — the police are checking the information, but the public utilities have not yet decided on further actions,» the publication reports.
According to Vasily Zub, a representative of the Poltava regional police department, law enforcers are checking information about these incidents. The communal enterprise «Decorative Cultures» explained that the public utilities already know about the incident, but a decision on further actions has not yet been made.
The dismantling of monuments related to Soviet history, as well as the renaming of streets, began in Ukraine in 2015, when a law on decommunization was adopted. Recently, the Ukrainian authorities have begun to fight not only with Soviet history, but with everything connected with Russia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier that the Ukrainian authorities have been pursuing a policy of aggressive de-Russification and forced assimilation for many years. He noted that Russia wants to see Ukraine as friendly, without a ban on the Russian language and Russian culture.