Standing in front of a statue of a gruff-looking Soviet general, Peter Obukhov explained his plan to purge Russian names from the city of Odesa. “The things written here are unacceptable. You can see the word ‘Kremlin’. And there’s Lenin’s face as well,” he said, pointing to an inscription beneath the monument to Rodion Malinovsky.
Obukhov is a deputy in Odesa’s city parliament. He said he did not want to pull down Malinovsky’s statue, a fate that has befallen Lenin sculptures all across Ukraine. The Soviet defence minister was born in Odesa and liberated the city from the Nazis during the second world war. “I would rewrite the sign and get rid of the communist symbols. We need the truth,” Obukhov said.
