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Crimea to get monument to Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt to mark Yalta meeting anniversary

The ten-ton statue, a work of Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, will be installed in front of the Livadia Palace that hosted the Yalta conference

Livadia Palace in Crimea ITAR-TASS/Alexei Pavlishak

Livadia Palace in Crimea

© ITAR-TASS/Alexei Pavlishak

SIMFEROPOL, November 5. /TASS/ A monument to Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt will be unveiled in Crimea as part of the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the 1945 Yalta conference, Crimea's Deputy Prime Minister Larisa Opanasyuk said on Wednesday.

The ten-ton statue, a work of Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, will be installed in front of the Livadia Palace that hosted the Yalta conference, the second wartime meeting of the Big Three, on February 4-11, 1945.

Opanasyuk said the huge statue will be Tsereteli's gift to the palace where the three leaders met to discuss Europe's post-war future. "We just have to bring the sculpture and install it," she said.

Opanasyuk said it was the same monument that had been proposed for the 60th anniversary of the Yalta conference marked in 2005. However, the statue was not installed following protests by a number of Crimea's political parties opposed to any monument commemorating Stalin.

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