A monument to Prince Vladimir was unveiled today in the center of Moscow on Borovitskaya Square.
Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at Telegram, Facebook, Classmates or In contact with
The ceremony was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Kirill.
According to Putin, Prince Vladimir went down in history as “a collector and defender of Russian lands, a far-sighted politician who created the foundations of a strong, united, centralized state, which eventually united equal peoples, languages, cultures and religions into one huge family.”
“His era knew many achievements, and the most important, defining, of course, the key one was the baptism of Rus'. This choice became a common spiritual source for the peoples of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and laid the moral and value foundations that determine our lives to this day,” Putin is quoted by the Kremlin's official website.
Patriarch of All Rus' Kirill believes that the monument to Prince Vladimir is “a symbol of the unity of all the peoples of which he is the father, and these are the peoples of historical Rus', now living within the borders of many states.”
“A monument to a father can be wherever his children live. There is no contradiction in this, but it’s bad if children forget that they have the same father,” Patriarch Kirill emphasized.
The installation of the 17,5-meter-high monument, which was delivered by a special road train from Khimki near Moscow, began on October 15. It was originally planned to erect the monument on the Lenin Hills in 2015, the year of the millennium of the death of the Baptist of Rus', but the geological condition of the chosen location did not meet the requirements for installing a multi-ton monument. By voting on the RVIO website and the Active Citizen portal, another point on the map of Moscow was chosen - Borovitskaya Square, which was later approved by the Commission on Monumental Art under the Moscow City Duma.