Ukraine has removed the Soviet hammer and sickle from one of its most iconic monuments.
Construction teams spent days scaling, dismantling and replacing a portion of the 330-foot Motherland Monument in Kyiv.
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The statue, built by the Soviet Union and completed in 1981, depicts a robed woman holding high a shield in one hand and a sword in the other.
The shield's prominent hammer and sickle were replaced with the Ukrainian trident coat of arms.
Ukraine's national World War II museum released a statement on the statue's alteration, saying the hammer and sickle represent a nation and ideology that "destroyed millions of people."
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"Together with the coat of arms, we’ve disposed the markers of our belonging to the ‘post-Soviet space’. We are not ‘post-’, but sovereign, independent and free Ukraine," the statement read.
The removal of the communist symbol was considered long before Russia's invasion of the country.
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," said Kiev deputy mayor Oleksiy Reznikov said in 2015. "Symbolism irritates some people and creates a certain aura that we need to get rid of."
