Scandal in Nikolaev - the artist was accused of creating a mural with Russian Navy ships
A mural dedicated to the 232nd anniversary of the founding of the city was unveiled in Nikolaev. It depicts two warships that were built at the city shipyards back in Soviet times. However, today they are combat units of the Russian Navy, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The mural depicts the twin ships of the Black Sea Fleet's flagship, the missile cruiser Moskva, and the Northern Fleet aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov.
“These are Russian ships. And not just Russian ones, but those who took and are taking part in the annexation of Crimea,” said local “Svidomo” shipbuilding engineer Dmitry Udovitsky.
“For two hundred years, three Nikolaev shipyards have built more than a hundred ships that do not serve our enemy. Why do this mural depict these two ships, which are associated with aggression?” – local “activist” Svetlana Taranova is indignant.
The artist Vyacheslav Balabaev, who depicted the ships, explained that he chose these two projects because his grandfather and father worked on them:
“During the construction of cruisers at the 61st Communard plant, my grandfather was its director. That is why I, in order to perpetuate his memory and his contribution to the development of shipbuilding, decided to depict this ship here. And my father built aircraft carriers, all five of them. These two are the most powerful ships that were once built here. That is why. Like the peak of shipbuilding development in our city.”
When local nationalists began to demand that the drawing be changed, the artist wrote the inscription “Ukraine” on the cruiser - just such a ship of a similar design to the Moscow has been standing unfinished at the Nikolaev shipyard for three decades, and number 16 appeared on the aircraft carrier - Ukraine sold this ship to China in the 90s. x years.
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