Odesa Rejects Catherine the Great as Putin’s Invasion Makes Russia Toxic
KyivPostNov 16, 2022
On Wednesday, Ukraine's Odesa utility workers hauled off the massive monument to the 18th-century Russian Empress Catherine the Great, who founded the Black Sea city in 1794 on territory captured from the Ottoman Empire.
The statue, which will be moved to the Odesa Fine Arts Museum, was originally erected in 1900 but was removed by Bolshevik leaders in 1920. It was later restored in 2007 as the Odesans decided to bring it back many years after Ukraine's independence from the USSR.
In the wake of Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, cities like Odesa can no longer glorify Russia’s imperial past. Catherine the Great is a symbol of that imperialism, and she represents the subjugation of Ukraine. Her statue's removal is justified as Ukraine must move forward, independent from Russian influence.
Despite Odesa authorities claiming that removing the statue of its founder Catherine the Great was supported by the public, only 8K people out of nearly 1M residents participated in the poll. This is actually a top-down anti-Russian move stemming from a presidential request as other monuments honoring Russian heroes have also been scrapped in Ukraine.
There's a 52% chance that Russia will control any formerly Ukrainian territories other than the Luhansk People's Republic, Donetsk People's Republic, or Crimea by January 2024, according to the Metaculus prediction community.