Ukraine’s cultural counteroffensive: The rush to erase Russia’s monuments

The erasure of the past has prompted a debate not unlike one in the UK and US: how to contend with the physical monuments to a fraught history? Ruby Mellen, Zoeann Murphy, Kostiantyn Khudov and Kasia Strek report

The Soviet Union gave Ukraine this Kyiv installation, called the People’s Friendship Arch, in 1982. In May of last year, it was renamed the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People (Kasia Strek/Panos Pictures for The Washington Post)

In one of the most profound examples of how President Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion has backfired, some Ukrainians are now trying to erase Russia – and the Russian language – from their culture and landscape.

Ukraine is a country where many, including president Volodymyr Zelensky, grew up with Russian as their native tongue. But now the language is vanishing from public life and fading even in some daily private conversations.

Russian-language books have been pulped. Russocentric museums have been pressured to shutter. Streets named after Russian sites, poets and Soviet army generals are marked for a change.