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Ukraine has removed the Soviet hammer and sickle from one of its most iconic monuments.
Construction teams spent days scaling, dismantling and replacing a portion of the 330-foot Motherland Monument in Kyiv.
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An aerial view of the Motherland Monument in Kyiv, Ukraine. The Ukrainian Coat of Arms was installed on its shield after the Soviet Coat of Arms was removed. (Photo by Ercin Erturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The statue, built by the Soviet Union and completed in 1981, depicts a robed woman holding high a shield in one hand and a sword in the other.
The shield's prominent hammer and sickle were replaced with the Ukrainian trident coat of arms.
Ukraine's national World War II museum released a statement on the statue's alteration, saying the hammer and sickle represent a nation and ideology that "destroyed millions of people."
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The Ukrainian coat of arms, known as the Tryzub of Trident, replaced the State Emblem of the Soviet Union on the Motherland Monument at the National Museum of the History ofUkraine in WWII Memorial Complex, Kyiv, capital of Ukraine. (Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
"Together with the coat of arms, we’ve disposed the markers of our belonging to the ‘post-Soviet space’. We are not ‘post-’, but sovereign, independent and free Ukraine," the statement read.
The removal of the communist symbol was considered long before Russia's invasion of the country.
Government officials have sought to alter the statue for almost a decade, citing public distaste for the Soviet imagery.
The coat of arms of Ukraine mounted on the shield of the Mother Motherland Monument instead of a Soviet one, on the grounds of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in World War II in Kiev, Ukraine. (Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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"Elimination of communism has to happen in people's heads and consciousness," said Kiev deputy mayor Oleksiy Reznikov said in 2015. "Symbolism irritates some people and creates a certain aura that we need to get rid of."
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