Monument in Kyiv, Ukraine
The Nikolai Vatutin monument was a sculpture monument to Soviet military commander Nikolai Vatutin, erected in 1948 and located in Mariinskyi Park, Kyiv, Ukraine, that was dismantled on 9 February 2023.
History.
Nikolai Vatutin was a Russian military commander during World War II who was responsible for many Red Army operations in the Ukrainian SSR, including the recapture of Kiev (Kyiv) by the Red Army in 1943. On 28 February 1944, Vatutin was ambushed by Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) insurgents far behind the front lines near the village of Mylyatyn in Ostroh Raion (Rivne Oblast). He succumbed to sepsis, caused by the injuries, in a hospital at Kiev on 15 April 1944.
Vatutin was buried in front of a statue depicting him near the Ukrainian Parliament in Kyiv's Mariinskyi Park. The monument was erected in 1948. It was designed by a prominent Soviet sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich. On the pedestal of the monument was written "To General Vatutin from the Ukrainian people."
In 2010, the Kyiv City State Administration gave the monument the status of cultural heritage site.
In 2015, Vatutin's daughter Elena announced that her father had been buried in Kiev (now called Kyiv) by Nikita Khrushchev against her family's wishes and that his surviving family lived in Russia and in the Czech Republic, and that she would attempt to obtain permission to rebury him in Moscow. The primary reason was stated to be the family's dislike for the new Ukrainian government's association with Stepan Bandera, whose Ukrainian Insurgent Army followers had killed Vatutin. Originally, a press release from A Just Russia — For Truth had claimed that the initiative to move his body had come from the Kyiv City State Administration. The reburial failed to materialize, and Vatutin's grave and monument remained in their place for the time being.
In November 2014, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory included Vatutin on the list of 'persons involved in the struggle against Ukraine's independence, the organization of famines, and political repressions.' After the adoption of the Ukrainian decommunization laws in 2015, Vatutin was initially not included on the list of "persons subject to decommunization."
Elena Vatutina died in 2016.
On 8 February 2023, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy revoked the Vatutin monument in Mariinskyi Park of its (Ukrainian) cultural heritage site status. On 27 January 2023, the ministry had proposed the Kyiv City State Administration to dismantle and move the monument. One suggestion was to store it in the National Museum-Preserve "Battle for Kyiv 1943".
The Kyiv City State Administration announced on 8 February 2023 that the Vatutin monument would be demolished the following day. The monument was removed on 9 February.
On 11 November 2023 the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine removed the status of monument from the grave of Vatutin that was still existing at the feet of the then already removed monument in order to comply with 2023 derussification-laws.
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