DISINFO: The EU supports the destruction of Soviet monuments to strengthen Russophobia
SUMMARY
The ongoing official war against Soviet military graves and monuments in the Baltic States, Poland and Ukraine violates all existing bilateral agreements. These acts of vandalism are carried out under the cover of local laws about alleged “decommunisation”.
This policy stays without punishment because of EU and NATO support. The goals of this policy are clear: to cement the Russophobic front and create its ideological basis.
RESPONSE
A common pro-Kremlin narrative on the Russophobic EU destroying Soviet monuments.
The authorities in the Baltic States, Poland, and Ukraine are removing certain Soviet monuments because they contravene local laws that prohibit the spread of totalitarian propaganda. The claim that NATO and the EU are promoting the destruction of these monuments to 'strengthen the Russophobic front' is unfounded.
In 2017, Poland introduced new laws to ban totalitarian propaganda. According to this law, up to 230 Soviet monuments may be replaced, a decision to be made by Polish local authorities. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs underlines that Red Army burial places and cemeteries situated in Poland will be carefully protected. It is possible to dismantle and remove only symbolic monuments to the Red Army.
In 2015, Paweł Ukielski, Deputy Head of the Polish Institute of Historical Remembrance, published an open letter, where he explained the need to remove the symbolic monuments to the Soviet Red Army from Polish public places (text in Polish and Russian). According to him, these monuments are perceived as symbols of captivity by the totalitarian USSR. In some cases, the Soviet monuments glorify the Red Army generals, who were involved in war crimes against the Poles.
The Polish Government does not enforce a centralised policy for replacing Red Army monuments; such decisions are made by local authorities.
Read similar cases connected to the issue of the Red Army monuments: Monuments to Soviet soldiers are massively demolished and damaged in Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic countries; the removal of the monument to Marshall Konev is a violation of the Czech-Russian Agreement of 1993; A monument to the Soviet soldier-liberator demolished in Lithuania.