Ministry of Culture allowed to dismantle the Arch of Friendship of Peoples in Kyiv
17 April 2024 17:10
The Ministry of Culture has stripped the former Arch of Friendship of Peoples (now the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People) of its status as a historical monument and allowed its dismantling. This is stated in a statement by the Ministry, Komersant ukrainskyi 
reports.
The Ministry of Culture and Information Policy has issued an order recognising the former cultural heritage site, the monument to mark the reunification of Ukraine with Russia, located in Kyiv’s Khreshchatyi Park, as not subject to entry in the State Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine.
“By this decision, the monument has lost its status as a historical monument and can be dismantled,”
– the statement said.
The Ministry of Culture stressed that the Arch of Friendship of Peoples was erected in 1982 to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the USSR and the 65th anniversary of the October Revolution, it is a symbol of Russian imperial policy and is subject to complete dismantling.
According to the professional opinion of the Expert Commission of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory on determining whether objects belong to the symbols of Russian imperial policy, the myth of the “reunification” of the two “brotherly” peoples embodied in the monument does not correspond to historical realities. And in the context of the Russian Federation’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, this myth is actively used to justify the “legitimacy” of Putin’s territorial claims.
It is also part of the Kremlin’s information and propaganda campaign to create distorted perceptions among Ukrainians about the alleged “historical statelessness” of the Ukrainian people as a “fragment” of the “divided Russian people” and the “artificiality” of Ukraine as a state.
“Despite being renamed the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People by the Kyiv City Council, the monument represents exclusively Soviet ideologues and connotations, and therefore poses a threat to Ukraine’s national security,”
– the Ministry of Culture said.
It should be noted that on 11 April, the Kyiv City State Administration stated that the arch was not subject to demolition, as it is a historical monument.
on 16 May 2022, the Kyiv City Council renamed the Arch of Friendship of Peoples to the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People. In addition to the arch itself, part of the composition was a Soviet monument with two “proletarians” – a Ukrainian and a Russian – which was dismantled in April 2022.
