Vandals damaged a monument to Soviet soldiers in Slovakia

Vandals have damaged a monument to Soviet soldiers in the Slovak city of Košice. The Slovak Spectator (TSS) newspaper reported on December 27.

"About five weeks after the restored emblems of the communist-era sickle and hammer were installed on the Soviet war memorial in the center of Košice, some of them disappeared and others were damaged," the newspaper informed.

It is specified that the monument, which commemorates the losses of the Red Army in World War II, was recently restored for €14,000. However, the emblems of the sickle and hammer were targeted by vandals.

Also on Christmas Day, local activist Lubos Lorenc shared a video of an unidentified man destroying several symbols. The act of vandalism prompted members of the local council to call for its removal or relocation, the newspaper noted.

Earlier, on November 12, Viktor Vodolatsky, deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on CIS affairs, Eurasian integration and relations with compatriots, pointed to the entrenched Russophobia. On that day, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation reported that Valdas Bartkevicius, an activist from Lithuania, desecrated a monument to the Warriors-liberators in Suzha, Kursk Region.

The struggle with monuments to Russian and Soviet figures and culture is observed not only in Slovakia. Thus, in Latvia, in early October it was reported that in Riga for the second time in a month and a half the monument to the Russian commander of Scottish-German origin, Field Marshal General Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, was desecrated.