KIEV, January 9. /TASS/. Local officials of the town of Kamenskoye in Ukraine’s eastern Dnepropetrovsk district decided to put off dismantling a monument to ex-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev due to a lack of funding, Ukrainian media outlet Vesti reported, citing a local official.

Brezhnev was born in Kamenskoye in 1906 and he served as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982. The aforementioned monument to Brezhnev in his hometown of Kamenskoye was unveiled in 1976.

"We do not have enough money to dismantle the monument to the secretary general," Vesti cited a letter from First Deputy Mayor of Kamenskoye Alexander Chernyshyov as saying.

According to Chernyshyov, "the work to dismantle Brezhnev’s bust would require extra financing, but given the current state of hostilities the municipal budget’s finances are first and foremost allocated to ensuring territorial defense, security and the vital daily functions of the local population as well as sustaining the operability of the budgetary sphere and public utility facilities."

The document also stated that tearing down the monument to the former Soviet leader would be back on the agenda once all military activities will have ended.

After the 2014 coup, Ukraine passed a law on decommunization, which stipulates the removal of monuments and renaming locations related to the Soviet era. The post-Maidan Ukrainian authorities have renamed over 900 cities, towns and villages, as well as about 50,000 streets, over the past eight years.

Kiev regime officials recently stepped up their fight against everything that bears a resemblance to Russia and the Soviet Union by pulling down monuments to Russian writers and renaming streets that bore the names of Russian writers, artists, scientists and explorers.