Orthodox Christian fund wants to buy Kutuzov monument removed in Ukraine
SARATOV. Feb 26 (Interfax) - A Saratov-based regional public fund, Orthodox Christianity and Modernity, wrote a letter to the head of the Brody District State Administration (Lviv region, Ukraine), Andriy Kovtun, offering to buy the dismantled monument to Mikhail Kutuzov.
"The fund considers the dismantling of the Kutuzov monument an affront to the shared glorious history of Russia and Ukraine and ultimately to the memory of our ancestors who gave their lives in the fight against Napoleon's invasion," according to an official statement posted on the Saratov diocese's website on Wednesday.
"One of our areas of concern is to preserve the cultural and historic values of our society," the fund said.
"Over the long years of its existence the Fund repeatedly financed various events associated with the city's cultural life and has provided aid to other public organizations. The fund considers the salvaging of the monument to Field Marshal General Mikhail Kutuzov a matter of honor and is planning to install it in Saratov," the statement said.
The bust of the Russian military chief in the Brody district center was removed at the behest of the city council on February 24.
The city council was thus responding to a request by a public figure, Ihor Kalyntsya, who suggested that the Kutuzov bust in front of a pedagogical college be replaced by a monument to the Maidan Heroes.
