The emblem in the Mother Ukraine Monument in Kyiv has replaced the communist Soviet-era hammer and sickle with Ukraine's current emblem, the Tryzub or trident.
Construction crews in the monument have spent days scaling, dismantling, and replacing a portion of the 330-foot (100-meter) monument Sunday (August 6).
The replacement was done ahead of its official unveiling on August 24, Ukrainian Independence Day.
This aerial view taken on August 6, 2023, shows steeplejacks installing the coat of arms of Ukraine on the shield of the 62-meter Motherland Monument in Kyiv, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian trident replaced the coat of arms of the former Soviet Union, which was removed earlier this month.
Ukraine's World War II museum, which is at the base of the monument, said the removal of the communist symbol was considered long before Russia's invasion of the country in 2022. It was also part of renaming its streets and key places with more Ukrainian and Western names instead of Russian. Government officials have sought to alter the statue for almost a decade, citing public distaste for the Soviet imagery.
"Elimination of communism has to happen in people's heads and consciousness," Kyiv deputy mayor Oleksiy Reznikov said in 2015. "Symbolism irritates some people and creates a certain aura that we need to get rid of."
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From Soviet to Ukrainian
Formerly known as the Motherland Monument, it was built by the Soviet Union and was completed in 1981 at a site on the right bank of the Dnipro River facing east toward Moscow. It depicts a robed woman holding a sword high on her right hand and a shield in her left.
Originally, the shield sports the Soviet emblem of the hammer and sickle, which was replaced with the Ukrainian tryzub, an emblem the Ukrainian people have been using as far back as the establishment of the Kyivan Rus in the ninth century AD and was standardized in form during the Rurik dynasty.
The base of the monument serves as the National World War II museum. In a statement, the museum said the statue's alteration was necessary as the hammer and sickle represented a nation that no longer existed and an ideology that "destroyed millions of people.
"Together with the coat of arms, we've disposed [of] the markers of our belonging to the 'post-Soviet space,'" the statement added. "We are not 'post-', but sovereign, independent and free Ukraine."
There are also other measures both church and state officials in Ukraine have been implementing to align itself more with its European neighbors, such as the moving of Christmas celebrations to December 25 instead of January 7 in the Russian calendar, as per CNN.
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