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Yuriy Didovets, a lawyer who lives in Kyiv, was part of the crowd that toppled a statue of Lenin in the city on December 8, 2013. Several weeks earlier, mass protests had broken out in response to the governments decision to postpone signing an association agreement with the European Union. These were the early days of the EuroMaidan movement.

Didovets, who was part of the protest movement, took Lenins head as a souvenir. The piece of red quartzite rock now sits in his office. Another protester, Ihor Miroshnychenko, a member of the nationalist party Svoboda, who organized the toppling of the Lenin statue, took home a hand.

For me, it was a symbolic moment, said Miroshnychenko. I understood that after the fall of Lenin, the Yanukovych regime would fall too. At that moment, Yanukovych lost control over the streets. Police were there, but they let us do it.

The motivation behind the Leninopad or Lenin fall that followed, where thousands of statues across the country were removed from public spaces, is comparable to the anger that is propelling Western activists to call for statues of controversial public figures to be taken off their plinths.

Often, society ignores the ambivalent biography of a historical figure, concentrating on positive sides of his heritage up to a certain moment, said Andreas Umland, a senior expert of the Ukrainian Institute of Future.

At some point, that exercise in selective memory breaks down because standards shift, he said. That doesnt erase the fact that they contributed a lot to the development of society, he stressed, but that social and political tides have turned.

* * *

In Ukraine, statues of communist leaders had a clear political purpose: They were reminders of a shared Soviet history, which Russia continued to use to wield influence and preserve its dominance over its former satellite state well after independence.

When Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and started to fuel violent pro-Russian uprisings in eastern Ukraine, these symbols of Russian power became stark reminders of Ukraines ongoing struggle for sovereignty.

In 2015, the Ukrainian government adopted legislation that formally equated the Soviet regime with Germanys wartime Nazi regime, and ordered all symbols of both ideologies to be removed from streets across the country. According to the Ukrainian National Remembrance Institute, some 2,400 communist monuments were taken down between 2015 and 2020.

The move didnt go down well among some members of the older generation, which maintains the Soviet regime did good and carries nostalgia for its leaders.

This is just brutal, said Tamara Malyzheva, 74, a retiree from Kyiv. Whether you support that ideology or not, Kyiv was a stable place to live during USSR, and we must remember those days, not surrender them to the Western Ukraine that always hated communists.

When men first started to hammer at the Lenin statue in Kyiv in 2013, they were interrupted by an old man who approached the statue and hugged it, Sbastian Gobert, a French journalist who was there to cover the protests, recalled.

He was crying, he begged the demonstrators to stop. It was obvious at that moment that Leninopad was not a consensual topic, he said in an interview over email.

Statues became a question of identity and political allegiance as well, said Gobert. There are hardly any monuments to Lenin left in western Ukraine, but the ex-Soviet leader still stands proudly on his plinths in Crimea and in the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Despite resistance among some pockets of the population, the removal of communist markers has been a success, according to Bohdan Korolenko, a historian at the Ukrainian National Remembrance Institute, because some 95 percent of symbols of the totalitarian regime were removed from public display.

"The main task of decommunization is not to take down a statue or rename a street, it is to change the identity of Ukrainians" and prevent similar ideology from taking root again, he said. Ukrainians, he added, "need to understand communism was a suppressive regime. Unfortunately, many Ukrainians still have not learned that lesson.

At some point government lost control over the process, Korolenko admitted. There were simply too many statues for the process to be completely regulated.

Many people did not wait for an answer to come from the government to make up their own minds, said Gobert. In 2017, the French journalist published the book Looking for Lenin, about his search, along with Swiss photographer Niels Ackermann, for Ukraines missing Soviet statues.

The two found that while some monuments had been destroyed, others had been transformed or repurposed. People went their own way to replace Lenin with religious figures, with flowers, with fountains, with [representations of] Cossacks or with nothing, he said.

Just as there is no single interpretation of the past, there is no single way to deal with its physical relics, according to Gobert. No one answer was found.

Some statues ended up in private collections; others are still collecting dust in local authorities basements.

The most fortunate ones have found a new home as part of the exhibit USSRic Park, which opened in 2019 in a corner of a national park near the town of Putyvl, in northeastern Ukraine, where visitors can walk among some 100 marble and quartzite statues standing in the shade of the local forest's trees.

We took the idea from Hungary and Lithuania, said Serhiy Tupyk, the parks director, referring to historical parks set up in the 1990s dedicated to relics of totalitarian regimes.

Before opening the park, Tupyk and his team spent four years collecting communist statues from across the country, including monuments to Joseph Stalin, Lenin, Soviet workers, Red Army commanders and many others. We have the full pantheon of Soviet gods, Tupyk joked.

To Tupyk, the destruction of monuments to a troubled past represents a loss and a missed opportunity.

It is our history, he said. In museums, those monuments can no longer agitate for their ideology. Instead, he said, Curators can present them in a full historical context.

Veronika Melkozerova is a freelance journalist based in Ukraine.

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What the West can learn from Ukraine's treatment of Soviet monuments - Politico

Summary

The SMM recorded nine ceasefire violations in Donetsk region (compared with one during the previous reporting period) and 93 ceasefire violations in Luhansk region (compared with none during the previous reporting period).

From 00:01 on 27 July until the end of the reporting period, the SMM recorded a total of 225 ceasefire violations.

The SMM corroborated reports of a man injured due to shrapnel on 27 July in government-controlled Marinka, Donetsk region.

The Mission continued monitoring the disengagement areas near Stanytsia Luhanska, Zolote and Petrivske. Inside the latter two areas, an SMM long-range unmanned aerial vehicle observed people during evening and night hours.

The SMM observed weapons in violation of withdrawal lines on both sides of the contact line.

The Mission facilitated and monitored adherence to localised ceasefires to enable repairs to as well as maintenance and operation of critical civilian infrastructure.

The SMM continued following up on the situation of civilians amid the COVID-19 outbreak, including at entry-exit checkpoints and corresponding checkpoints in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The Missions freedom of movement continued to be restricted, including at a checkpoint near non-government-controlled Olenivka.*

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OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) Daily Report 182/2020 issued on 1 August 2020 - Ukraine - ReliefWeb

"The establishment of the memorial is extremely important for our country. Its history contains a lot of tragic pages. But we must bear them in mind and tell the coming generations about them. Such moments should stay in the history of Ukraine. They are in our talks, in our memory, in books. It would be very good if this project were brought into life and we built history together with you."

President Zelensky also emphasized the importance of remembering the Ukrainian "Righteous Among the Nations," who saved Jews in the Holocaust.

In a significant development, the meeting participants agreed to form a working committee, headed by Andrii Yermak, Head of the Presidential Administration. The committee will coordinate regarding the framework of the Memorial's establishment as well as to prepare for the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy.

Supervisory Board member, President of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, stressed that the future memorial must give visitors a clear answer to the question of what is anti-Semitism and draw the world's attention to Babyn Yar.

Ronald Laudersaid, "This is the third generation that knows about the Holocaust. But while almost everybody knows about Auschwitz, the history of Babyn Yar is almost unknown to young people. I want people to visit Kyiv in order to see the Babyn Yar Memorial, to understand what happened here. We have a chance now to do something fantastic. The more people that know what happened at Babyn Yar, the better off the world will be."

The Head of the Supervisory Board, Natan Sharansky pointed out that the history of Babyn Yar is not only of importance for Jewish people, as it is also the site where other nationalities perished, in particular, Ukrainian, Belarus, and Polish people.

Natan Sharanskysaid, "This initiative is not just a monument, but a critical memorial, with a museum, a research center, contributing to raising the degree of tolerance in society, playing a global role in Ukraine's positioning in the world. Such institutions throughout the world are established in partnership with the state and supported by its key officials."

The first President of Ukraine (1991-1994) Leonid Kravchuk, who has also joined the Supervisory Board, emphasized that the future Memorial will make an indisputable historical statement. "This Project is interesting, important, and highly comprehensive. It is part of history. Babyn Yar is a terrible tragedy and that's why we have to create an unrivalled memory of it, to make the best project possible."

Another Supervisory Board member, former-Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice-Chancellor of Germany (1998-2005) Joschka Fischer, said "For my country, it's very important not to forget and to contribute everything that we can towards memory of the Holocaust and this terrible crime."

In September 1941, just days after the Nazis occupied Kyiv, around 34,000 of the city's Jews were marched to the Babyn Yar ravine and shot dead over a two-day period. Later massacres were also carried out at the same site, killing victims of other minorities and nationalities.

The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center will respectfully commemorate the victims of the tragedy and promote the humanization of mankind through preserving memory and study of the history of the Holocaust.

About the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center

The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Centre is a non-governmental charity whose purpose is to preserve and cultivate the memory of the Holocaust and the Babyn Yar tragedy in Ukraine by turning the Babyn Yar area into a place of remembrance. The Foundation's mission is to worthily honour the memory of the victims of the tragedy and to contribute to the humanization of society through preserving and studying the history of the Holocaust.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1222366/President_Ukraine_Volodymyr_Zelensky.jpg

SOURCE Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center

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Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky Supports Construction of Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial; Working Committee to be Headed by Andrii Yermak, Head of...

The Government of Ukraine has identified key problematic issues related to functioning of crossing points on the border with the EU.

"We are forming an action plan for each border crossing point. This will send a message that we are committed to cooperation and open access to the opportunities of the largest regional programmes of the European Union: the EU strategy for the Danube Region and the strategy for the Carpathians. These strategies will allow us to develop regional cooperation with the EU in general and with the countries of the Carpathian and Danube regions in particular. As soon as we start working on these problematic border crossing points, we will unblock our participation in much broader projects," Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Olha Stefanishyna said, the European integration portal informs.

More border crossing points are needed to make it more comfortable for people to cross the border, the Vice Prime Minister noted.

According to her, ten priority BCPs on the border with the European Union are currently being discussed.

"The second component is a joint border and customs control. This is when Ukrainian and, for example, Slovak border guards carry out joint border customs controls and a person does not need to undergo control procedures twice. We already have political agreements with neighboring countries and the European Commission. These measures will help simplify procedures, reduce queues, and increase the performance of the border guards while maintaining security, Stefanishyna explained.

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Stefanishyna: Ukraine plans to modernize ten crossing points on border with EU - Ukrinform. Ukraine and world news

The nation's political direction has become a concern for many Ukrainians.

The message many are receiving now is very different from the one of hope and pledges of reform they put their faith in at last years elections.

In recent months, Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was elected in 2019 on the promise of wide-reaching reforms to battle corruption and improve the economy, has sacked and replaced the government for being inept.

Former prime minister, Oleksiy Honcharuk, was fired in March, along with several of his ministers, the Ukrainian prosecutor general, Ruslan Riaboshapka, and other officials. Honcharuk and Riaboshapka, who were well-regarded in the West, have since expressed their concern about the direction of Ukraine, where they feel the malign influence of powerful people on the countrys economy is growing.

Since early March, when Zelenskyy changed the government for no apparent reason with unknown people, there has been no direction in the government, Anders slund, an economist and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Euronews.

We have seen that Zelenskyys new people have undone everything that was done before. It seems for me that it is done to restore corruption and oligarchs seem to influence this development.

Everything is getting destroyed.

The hope for a better future which prevailed when Zelenskyy was elected has gone, he adds. slund is not the only one who is sceptical about what is going on inside Ukraine, where the government, he says, is turning away from anti-corruption measures and western-style reforms.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently provided Ukraine with a $5 billion (4.4 billion) loan to battle COVID-19, but noted in a report that reforms increasingly faced resistance from vested interests, and court rulings were undermining reform progress, especially in tackling corruption and financial sector reforms.

At the beginning of July, the governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, Yakiv Smolii, handed in his resignation because of systematic political pressure, which, he said, makes it impossible for me, as chairman, to effectively manage the National Bank. Some experts see the dismissal as yet another example of the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, where they fear that the independence of the Ukrainian National Bank is under pressure, which could jeopardise the countrys IMF loan.

Aleksey Jakubin, who is an associate professor at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and an expert in Ukrainian politics, told Euronews that it is all too easy to claim that the time for reforms in is over; in part because reforms take a long time, but also because the previous government under Honcharuk was incompetent. The Presidents party Servant of the People had a majority in parliament, so therefore Honcharuk had every opportunity to push reforms over the line during his tenure, says Jakubin.

But the reforms of the government of Honcharuk had no visible effects, and it seems that they were not ready to understand the situation in the economy, says Jakubin, I think that the new government led by prime minister Denys Shmyhal is much more realistic than Honcharuk, who acted under his own personal economic, social and political visions, maybe neo-liberal, while Shmyhal is much more technical and looks at the Ukrainian situation.

Jakubin is, however, worried that Ukraine is unable to shake off its toxicity, making it more difficult for the country to reform itself while also putting more pressure on reformers who want to implement change.

People with business interests in Ukraine are also becoming increasingly worried. In an email to the Kyiv Post, Tomas Fiala, the CEO of Dragon Capital, wrote that: We will put new investments on hold as the authorities have been doing for the last five months exactly the opposite from what investors, both domestic and international, expect from them and advise them. This is the last straw.

Pavlo Kutuev, the chair of the sociology department at the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, says that Western experts and investors may have put too many expectations for Zelenskyy and that we are seeing now is simply a return to how things are normally done in Ukraine.

It is an exaggeration to say that the time for reforms is over. I have never been too optimistic about the ambitions and hopes for modernisation and reforms in Ukraine, says Kutuev. We can say that the neo-liberal ideas, seen under Honcharuk, and Western hopes for rapid reforms in Ukraine are partly over, because we have seen, in my view, a return to reality in Ukrainian politics.

Kutuev says that Ukraine is a complex country with a lot of social and economic problems that need to be dealt with. The country is still scarred by its Soviet past, too. To paraphrase the title of Lenins 1904 book, reforms in Ukraine, he says, are often is one step forward and two steps back.

Tymofiy Mylovanov, on the other hand, who was the former economy minister before the presidents cabinet reshuffle back in March, is definitely someone who sees the window of opportunity to reform Ukraine waning.

Mylovanov decided to resign after Honcharuk was dismissed as prime minister as he did not agree with the views of the new team brought in by the president. While Zelenskyy was effective in disrupting the political system, it is unclear what the strategy is now, he contends.

I see the typical rhetoric now. That we need to support the Ukrainian economy, need to increase pension, need to trade more. Still, it is standard things to hear from politicians all over the world, says Mylovanov, who now is the head of the Kyiv School of Economics. This is standard politics, but I do not see a clear and consistent approach now and, therefore, the window for change appears to be limited.

Shortly after the government reshuffle, officials appointed to fight corruption pervasive in the economy - often the most corrupt sector - were also removed. Among them was Maxim Nefyodov, who was the head of the State Customs Service. He had been set the ambitious goal of cutting corrupt customs practices in half over 18 months but found himself out of a job after less than a year.

The time for reforms in Ukraine is over, he told Euronews. The signal that the government is now sending to people is this: being a reformer means that you will be harassed, get bad PR and that you will have no political future.

While being a bad guy, who is not reforming the system, means that you will be fine and have no problems. It is the signal the government is sending because the patience and willingness in the political system are gone, and the bad guys just need to wait us out.

Immediately after taking office, he said he was followed in the streets and attacked in the media by opponents because he tried to change the corrupt system which benefitted smugglers and some oligarchs who were not happy and wanted to fight back. He expected this but hoped for better support from the president, which diminished quickly.

The official explanation for Nefyodovs dismissal was that he was ineffective in his role and that he did not deliver the promised results. While Nefyodov argues that he could have done more, reforms take time, he says, adding that he couldnt solve customs corruption in a matter of months when several thousands of cars and trucks need to be checked every day.

After his dismissal, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) started investigating Nefyodov for corruption, which some Western experts such as slund see as merely a political move. The NABU case is now closed, Nefyodov said.

Zelenskyy brought in a young - and mostly politically inexperienced - team last year when he first won the presidency and later a majority in parliament. The new government was a great source of hope among Ukrainians; partly because it had a majority, but also because it brought with it new faces and tall ambitions. However, in the last few months, the presidents approval rate has plummeted to 38 per cent from being higher than 50 per cent right after his election. While many experts and former politicians are raising concerns, not all experts agree.

Responding to claims made by Mylovanov and Nefyodov, chairman of the Penta Center of Applied Political Studies, Volodymyr Fesenko believes that they should have known that the political environment in Ukraine is tough and competitive, and that they were real concerns about their suitability.

The main reasons for the dismissal of those who complained to you are that they were weak reformers and even weaker politicians, who did not know how to build communication with other political actors and did not know how to work with public opinion, he said.

They did not have a strategy and tactics for reform. In Ukraine, reforms that are carried out by political coalitions and only reform teams are successful. Single reformers tend to lose.

Fesenko agrees that it is difficult to change things when governments are often dismissed, but he does not believe the window for reforms is closing in Ukraine. He still sees reform-friendly ministers in government and agrees that Zelenskyy wanted people with more experience.

We must also consider the psychology of President Zelenskyy, who does not want to wait long for results and expects quick and effective results from his ministers. Ukrainian voters do not want to wait either, Fesenko says, pointing out that Ukraine has seen several reforms approved, such as land reforms which enable the sale of agricultural land, and a new banking law."

However, slund contends that those reforms were carried out only because the IMF was twisting Ukraines arm and leveraging its multi-billion dollar loan to combat the economic effects of COVID-19.

Mylovanov and Nefyodov deny being inefficient but instead argue that the real problem is the lack of political stability and the attacks from the opposition and oligarch-controlled media.

Sergii Verlanov, who was the head of the Ukrainian State Tax Service and was also fired after a few months in office, says that Zelenskyys government could have done better - and that the current developments in the country are worrying.

In 2019, we met the revenue target in the State Tax Service for the first time in many years, and I was, therefore, not dismissed because I was underperforming, he says. I dont know why I was sacked, but the government sends a signal to everyone that it is going for the quick wins rather than the lengthy reforms. It might be better for your approval ratings now, but it does not give success in the long run and will not change the system.

Verlanov says that while he must give credit to the Ukrainian parliament for passing more than 60 laws, some of which could bring about real change, many of them never got implemented. Like Nefyodov, Verlanov is also being probed after his dismissal. According to Ukrainian media, the SBU, Ukraines Secret Service, has opened an investigation claiming that he is laundering funds to finance terrorism, an accusation which Verlanov says is ridiculous and common practice to discredit people being removed from office.

According to Mylovanov, Ukraine may need to learn that it cannot change its government all the time, in the same way, a young person would need to learn realities the hard way. He notes that Ukraine has had 18 different prime ministers since it gained its independence from the Soviet Union 29 years ago.

I also fear that the current prime minister, Denys Smygal, will not last long, he adds. Ukraine needs to stick with people long [enough] for things to change, but it seems like the only people fighting for the government in Ukraine is the prime minister and the president. Everyone else wants to dismantle the system for personal gains or other reasons. It is a toxic environment.

Euronews contacted Yulia Mendel, the press officer for President Zelenskyy, for comment. She has not responded.

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Corruption in Ukraine: Is time running out for Zelenskyy to reform the country? - Euronews