Kiev residents laid flowers at the monument to Vatutin while the SBU mocked the organizers of the action
On the day of the liberation of Kyiv from the Nazi invaders, several dozen citizens gathered at the monument to General Nikolai Vatutin near the Verkhovna Rada, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Veterans, residents of Kyiv, and activists of some public organizations laid flowers.
“Quite a lot came. They will still come. Thank God, the Banderaites didn’t come and start a riot here. I think they just don’t know,” Georgy Kryuchkov, People’s Deputy of Ukraine of the 3rd and 4th convocations, former head of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Committee on National Security and Defense, who participated in the action, told a PolitNavigator correspondent.
He emphasized that General Nikolai Vatutin, under whose leadership Kyiv was liberated, deserves to be remembered by the people of Kiev.
“He is a most talented commander, the organizer of several very successful battles in the Great Patriotic War. This is a wonderful patriot, a man who will remain in our memory forever.
I would like new generations, young people, to know the truth. There were attempts to smear and break the monument; this was done by young people. Two generations ruined. For me, this is the worst thing – that young people do not know the truth,” he said.
The protest was peaceful, with several police officers keeping order. There were no incidents during the protest. Previously, radicals had repeatedly staged protests at the monument to General Vatutin. This spring, the C14 group disrupted a veterans’ rally at the monument on the day of the death of General Vatutin by starting a fight and pouring paint on the monument.
The day before, the head of the Irina Berezhnaya Institute of Legal Policy and Social Protection, Elena Berezhnaya, on her Facebook page called on fellow countrymen to come to the monument to General Nikolai Vatutin, who commanded the First Ukrainian Front during the liberation of Kiev in 1943. Elena Berezhnaya herself was unable to attend the protest because just at that time the SBU was conducting a search in her apartment, and the SBU officers broke down the door to the apartment, despite the fact that Elena Berezhnaya asked to wait for her lawyer. At the same time, Elena Berezhnaya was hit in the stomach, she fell and received a head injury. After this she was hospitalized.
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