Ukraine tears down giant Lenin statue, live on YouTube

Exhaustive efforts to tear down Ukraine’s largest remaining monument to Vladimir Lenin bore fruit on Thursday when workers prised the late Soviet leader’s statue from its plinth in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhya.

Since a pro-Western uprising ousted a Russia-backed president in 2014, Ukraine has passed laws aimed at severing the former Soviet republic from its communist past – a move some have criticized as an attempt to erase history.

Nearly 1,000 statues of Lenin have been removed since anti-government protesters tore down his Kiev monument in late 2013, but the 20-metre (66 ft) size of the Zaporizhzhya monument frustrated multiple attempts to pull it down this week.

Read the rest of this article at Reuters.