MOSCOW, August 4. /TASS/. The Ukrainian authorities have taken down a bust of Vladimir Lenin in the village of Rudkovtsy in Ukraine’s Khmelnitsky Region, the last remaining monument to the founder of the Soviet state in the country, the Ukrinform news agency reported.

It noted that the local authorities took down the monument following an appeal by the Decolonization - Ukraine project which pushes for eliminating any remnants of Soviet and Russian heritage in Ukraine.

According to the news agency, the bust was taken to the premises of a public utility company which took down the monument. Ukrinform did not specify what would become of the monument. Earlier, in April 2024, the same bust was dismantled, but later restored.

Ukraine has been renaming streets and removing monuments to prominent Soviet and Russian figures since 2015, when a law on so-called decommunization was adopted. In 2022, a new wave of fighting against every reminder of Russian and Soviet history and culture began. In March 2023, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) passed a law on "decolonizing" place names, banning all geographic names associated with Russia and the Soviet era.