RIGA: Latvia dismantled on Thursday a Soviet-era monument in its capital city Riga following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite protests from the Baltic state’s ethnic Russian minority to keep it.

Demolition machinery was used to remove the 79-metre World War II memorial, which has become a rallying point for the Kremlin’s supporters in Latvia, according to a journalist at the scene.

Latvia, like fellow Baltic states Estonia and Lithuania, is a Nato and EU member that has shown strong support for Ukraine in the conflict with Russia.

Built in 1985, the Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German Fascist Invaders had featured statues of soldiers and a woman surrounding a central obelisk.

Local officials were forced to take down the monument after Latvia’s parliament voted to remove all remaining Soviet statues, plaques and bas-reliefs by mid-November.

Latvia’s ethnic Russian community — which makes up 30 percent of the population — had protested the removal of the memorial. Every year, thousands of ethnic Russians rallied at the monument on May 9 to commemorate the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.

Most Latvians see this date as the beginning of the Soviet occupation, which lasted until 1991.

The monument has been controversial from the beginning, as the original idea — a woman with an infant waiting for men to come back from the war — was censored in favour of a more Soviet theme.

It had also drawn criticism due to the fact that one of its sculptors, Levs Bukovskis, had served in a Waffen SS unit during the war.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2022