‘PATRIOTIC’

Russian Lawmaker Wants Statue of Ukrainian Poet Replaced With Wagner Boss

Andrei Gurulyov wants a famous statue of a Ukrainian poet torn down—and a new monument to the Kremlin’s shock troops in its place.

Apparently not content with launching missiles at Ukrainian citizens on their own territory, Russian officials have now declared war on a statue in Moscow—because the long-dead Ukrainian poet honored by the monument is supposedly a “foreign agent” threatening national security. “This is a true foreign agent. She was born and lived in the Russian Empire, but, frankly, she treated Russia badly,” Russian lawmaker Andrei Gurulyov said of Moscow’s monument to Lesya Ukrainka, a famed Ukrainian writer who died in 1913. “The law doesn’t say anywhere that a foreign agent must be alive,” Gurulyov argued, according to RBK Ukraine. His comments came about two weeks after Moscow residents began laying flowers in front of the monument following the Kremlin’s deadly airstrikes on a Dnipro residential building that killed dozens of Ukrainians. Gurulyov said the monument should be torn down and replaced with something more “patriotic.” “Look at how many great guys we have with [Wagner Group boss Yevgeny] Prigozhin and [Chechen leader Ramzan] Kadyrov,” Gurulyov said. “You can make a monument to someone who really distinguished himself, say, in Soledar. Or you can even have a composition: Prigozhin and several of his fighters.”

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