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City workers fail to clean Yeltsin’s monument from paint

Police have initiated criminal proceedings on charges of vandalism

YEKATERINBURG, August 28 (Itar-Tass) — City workers in Yekaterinburg have failed to clean a desecrated monument to Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin from paint.

“The urban utility service did everything within their power to clean the monument from paint. However, reagents couldn’t remove all the paint. Some traces of it have remained. The monument has to be dismantled to clean it from stains. The service has done everything that’s possible in street conditions,” Denis Sukhorukov, the press service chief of the Yekaterinburg city administration, told Itar-Tass.

He added that the Yeltsin Fund which owns the monument would have to decide on its future fate.

Unknown vandals poured blue paint on the monument to Yeltsin installed in the center of Yekaterinburg on August 24. Some letters on the pedestal were knocked down. Now, the monument is covered with black cloth.

Police have initiated criminal proceedings on charges of vandalism.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev unveiled the monument to Boris Yeltsin in February 2011 in connection with the 80th anniversary of Yeltsin’s birth. It’s a 10-meter-high stela made of white marble.