The Arch of Friendship of Peoples, an iconic Soviet monument in downtown Kyiv, became the Ukrainian People’s Arch of Freedom on Saturday. This measure follows a decision to that effect by the municipal council.
Today, the city council decided to ‘decommunize’ the name of the arch of the Friendship of the Peoples. It will now be the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People.
Vitali Klitschkomayor of the capital
“Today the City Council decided to ‘decommunize’ the name of the Peoples Friendship Arch. It will now be the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People,” announced the mayor of the capital, Vitali Klitschko.
The elected municipal officials have also “approved a list of more than 40 memorial monuments and emblems which must be removed from the streets and buildings of the capital to be transmitted to the museum of totalitarianism”, he added.
No hasty decision
If many places or monuments are to be renamed, Vitali Klitschko indicated that the process of naming new names would take time and would involve “specialists”, in particular historians, “so as not to take a hasty decision”.
The Arch of Friendship of Peoples is an imposing metal arch with a height of 35 meters erected in a park in the city center in 1982. It was part of the same complex as the sculpture of the two Russian and Ukrainian workers dismantled the month latest.
In 2018, anti-Russian activists put a trompe-l’oeil sticker on it, showing a crack in the center of the arch to underline the breakdown of relations between the two countries. Many residents in kyiv are calling for the renaming of other symbols whose names are linked to Russia or Belarus, its ally.