The city council of the Latvian capital, Riga, voted on Tuesday to demolish the monument to the 19th-century Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, deputy mayor Linda Ozola announced on Facebook.
"Pushkin's days are numbered in Kronvalda Park," Ozola wrote on Facebook , referring to the downtown park in which there is a statue of the Russian poet who lived between 1799 and 1837 and is one of the greatest figures in European literature, Russian News pointed out .
The deputy mayor also called the statue - which was a gift from the Russian Embassy in Latvia in 2009 and was placed in the park with the help of former Riga mayor Nils Usakovs - an "illegally erected monument".
The statue must "disappear" from the cityscape and be removed "immediately," added the deputy mayor. Ozola, a member of the conservative Kods Rigai party, was one of the four local representatives behind the initiative to remove the monument, the newspaper reports.
According to the portal, due to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, tension has also increased between the Latvian authorities and the country's significant Russian minority - which makes up about a quarter of the total population. Last year, Latvian President Egils Levits said that people of Russian origin whose loyalty to the government was questionable should be "isolated from society".
Source: Magyar Hírlap
Photo: LETA
