A tumultuous monarch of the Russian empire who expanded the nation's borders, Empress Catherine the Great's statue was removed after the city council in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odessa voted for its relocation.
The statue of the city's founder, which towers over a central square, has been vandalized repeatedly since the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, which has prompted many Ukrainians to reject their country's historical ties to Moscow.
The city council announced the decision to remove the statue on its website on Wednesday. Local lawmakers had also voted to remove and relocate a monument to an 18th-century Russian general, Alexander Suvorov.
A slim majority of Odessa residents had already voted – in an online poll organized by city authorities – to remove the statue of Catherine the Great, who was empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796.
Several petitions had also been submitted to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calling for the statute to be removed, but only local authorities were legally empowered to make the decision.
The statue, which is formally known as the Monument to the Founders of Odessa and features likenesses of several other tsarist-era figures, will be relocated to a temporary storage space and then to a museum, media outlet Suspilne reported.
Founded by Catherine the Great in the late 18th century, Odessa was a strategic city for Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union but had long been known as a cultural melting pot.
Since Ukraine gained independence in 1991, its port has served as an important part of the Ukrainian economy and has been hit repeatedly during Russia's war on Ukraine.
First erected in 1900, the statue of Catherine the Great was dismantled in 1920 under Soviet rule but restored by Ukrainian authorities in 2007.
Since Moscow's invasion, Ukrainian authorities have been removing monuments associated with Russia and renamed some streets linked with Russia under a process of "derussification."
