Ukrainian communists in the city of Zaporozhia unveiled a statue of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin on Wednesday. This has sparked outrage from Ukrainian nationalists.
Around 1,000 Communist Party supporters rallied at the unveiling of the statue, including many World War II veterans. It is important to keep in mind that Zaporozhia is a Russian-speaking city.
The statue to Stalin stands at seven feet tall. It depicts the leader holding a pipe and includes an inscription towards the bottom. It was unveiled this week in order to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
“It was the USSR under Stalin’s leadership that liberated Europe,” Olexander Zubchevsky, the second secretary of the Zaporozhia regional branch of the Communist Party, said.
It has been reported that the communists will guard the statue around the clock to make sure that it isn't vandalized.
Svoboda, a Ukrainian nationalist group, wanted to hold a protest against the communists over the monument, but local authorities denied them the permit to protest.
The statue is on land that is owned, to use that term loosely, by the Communist Party. So city permission wasn't required.
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