Ukraine’s leading World War II history museum will remove Soviet-era monuments as part of a push to erase centuries-old ties to Russia.
“The museum space must get rid of the Soviet narrative, which has been used for decades to promote the myth of the ‘great patriotic war,’” the Kiev-based National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War wrote in a statement on Facebook on Tuesday.
The museum said sculptures depicting the 1943 Battle of Kursk will be taken down as “a symbol of Bolshevik propaganda in monumental art.” It announced further plans to “profoundly change the architectural landscape by demolishing all monuments and elements of Soviet propaganda.”
Often described as the largest tank battle in history, the battle of Kursk saw the defeat of elite German SS units and paved a way for the liberation of Ukraine from the Nazi occupation.