Activists on Saturday pulled a Ukrainian folk shirt of a huge size over a statue of Vladimir Lenin in Zaporizhzhya in a bid to prevent the 20-meter-high monument from being pulled down by nationalist rioters and thereby stop potential violent attacks on them from admirers of the Bolshevik leader.
A crane was used to pull the white embroidered shirt over the statue. The sides of the marble pedestal were adorned with a traditional ornamental pattern.
"It's not for the sake of any reaction that I was doing this - I'm not running for any elected office," one of the authors of the project, journalist Yury Hudymenko, told Interfax.
"There's only one kind of reaction that I expect: to stop this monument from being pulled down at this specific moment. That is the only result I'm pressing for. If the authorities want to listen to my recommendations and put up a plaque there listing Lenin's crimes against the Ukrainian people, I would probably be satisfied," he said.
The authors of the project want a legal decision on the future of the monument by the local authorities.
"If anyone wants to state their position on what has been an indisputably negative personality in Ukrainian history, they will be able to do so in a more civilized way at this moment - by putting up a memorial plaque listing Lenin's crimes against the Ukrainian people, crimes that claimed millions of lives among us," Hudymenko said.
The beshirted statue is apparently becoming popular in Zaporizhzhya - people have been having pictures of themselves taken with that in the background.
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