The so-called “monument to the founders of Odesa”, on which Russian empress Catherine II stood surrounded by her favorites, was taken down overnight in Odesa.
According to Suspilne Odesa, the dismantling began at approximately 11:00 p.m. and lasted for almost three hours. In the morning, instead of the empress, who, according to Taras Shevchenko, “finished off” Ukraine, the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine was proudly flying on the pedestal.
The head of the Odesa Oblast Military Administration, Maksym Marchenko, called the dismantling of the Catherine II monument “a truly historic event.”
“I thank the residents of Odesa, who expressed their position that Russian imperial heritage has no place in modern, legal, democratic Ukraine. I thank the members of the Odesa City Council for making the right decision,” Marchenko wrote on Facebook.
For the first time, the monument to Catherine II and her associates — José de Ribas, François Sainte de Wollant, Platon Zubov and Grigory Potemkin — was erected in Odessa in 1900. In 1920, it was dismantled and restored in 2007 despite the protests of patriotic citizens.
In early November 2022, activists put a red executioner cap on the statue of Catherine II and hung a noose on her arm. It is characteristic that the actions of the activists took place during one of the many air raids — even after Catherine II, Muscovy never stopped trying to destroy Ukraine and everything Ukrainian.
