АННЕКСИЯ КРЫМА - БЕССМЫСЛЕННОЕ ПРЕСТУПЛЕНИЕ

Экс-главный редактор российского «Коммерсанта», бывший руководитель программы «Время», продюсер скандального телепроекта «Гражданин Поэт» Андрей Васильев:

"Забирать Крым не имело смысла ни с точки зрения российского народа, ни даже с точки зрения кровавой клики! На кой он всем сдался?! Туда и так можно было ездить и без загранпаспорта, и без украинского языка. Кстати, проще было добраться, чем сейчас.

– Боялись, что флот российский национализируют!
Дали бы бабла и стоял бы себе флот дальше — никому он там не мешал. А теперь надо втюхивать в Крым дикое количество денег. Пенсию у российских людей отняли – накопительную часть, которую они много лет в приказном порядке отслюнявливали со своей зарплаты… Конечно, Путин на этом сильно поднял свой рейтинг, но если спросить у народа, нахрена вам Крым? Не ответят ведь. Скажут: мы хохлам показали кузькину мать, вернули русской кровью политую землю! И как после этого относиться к нашему народу? Если судить по тому, что чьей кровью было полито, то сперва верните немцам Кенигсберг. Крым отдали Украине еще при любимой Путиным советской власти, но тогда это было пофиг – одна страна. А когда Союз развалился, украинцы получили Крым в обмен на отказ от ядерного оружия. Все справедливо. Чего ж теперь пересматривать? Это уже щипачество какое-то! Договаривайся, откупай, возьми в аренду как англичане Гонконг, если тебе этот Крым так уж сдался. Другое дело, что реально он не нужен никому. В фильме «Крым. Путь на родину» Путин сам рассказывает, как он возглавил войсковую операцию с ядерными боеголовками наготове. Вот тебе и Гаагский трибунал – ничего не надо доказывать, чистосердечное признание.

– А Донбасс?

Не было бы Крыма – не было б Донбасса. Теперь Путин стал заложником всех этих отморозков. Вернутся со своими пулеметами и начнут решать вопросы у себя в Сызрани и на Смоленщине. Так сидели на родине, любого участкового боялись, а тут – герои войны! И остановить трудно – путинские же СМИ развили такую истерию о помощи братьям-славянам. Народу все это нравится. Хотя, был бы Путин за справедливость, то сперва покончил бы с бандитизмом у себя на районе, где управа беспредельничает и менты. Но это стремно как-то – лучше на чужой территории славянам помочь.

– Не трудно без любви к родине и привязки к какому-то месту, печке?

Кому-то, может, и да, а мне – нет. Люди все разные: кто–то выпьет, сколько я обычно, и помрет. В любом случае, если даже любишь свою родину, то и люби ее – обнимай березку, пей квас – при чем тут другие страны?

- Зачем любить Россию против всех?

Ведь если у нашего патриота спросить, за что он любит родину, ничего путного не скажет. Любой американец тут же внятно объяснит про общество равных возможностей и прочее, а наш пролепечет про чистую душу и особый путь, а потом начнет за вопрос укорять: мол, государство тебя, Васильев, кормило-учило, а ты… Да хреново оно меня учило, чтобы после института три года горбатиться в каком-нибудь НИИ бабе своей на пару сапог. Это не я должен страну любить, а государство должно заслужить уважение своего гражданина, который ему налоги платит. А у нас единственная гордость, что войну 70 лет назад выиграли. Ничего, что Европа оклемалась за 15 лет, а у нас до сих пор нищета–разруха? И кто тут выиграл?

Лично я на этот праздник всегда стараюсь убраться из Москвы куда подальше. Стыдно, когда в 21-м веке по центру города ездят танки, пушки и «Катюши», портят асфальт. А где они берут ветеранов? Ведь самым молодым, которых забрали на фронт в 45–м в 18 лет, сейчас – 88. При том, что средний мужской возраст россиян – 55 лет, как в Зимбабве какой-нибудь. Еще и закон придумали, что пересматривать итоги войны – чуть ли не уголовщина. То есть запретили военную историю. Я к войне этой вообще-то хреново отношусь. Считаю, что Сталин сам ее развязал – для захвата Европы. Всю не удалось, а кусок оттяпал. Людей же в России никогда не жалели – пушечное мясо, и все тут."

Russia battles Western powers over MH17 tribunal

Russia has submitted a rival resolution to the UN Security Council as it attempts to block an international tribunal on the MH17 disaster

All 283 passengers and 15 crew on board were killed in the MH17 disaster

Malaysia has submitted a proposed resolution that would establish an international tribunal to try those accused of responsibility in thedestruction of MH17 over eastern Ukraine a year ago.

Russia opposes the plan, and on Monday circulated its own draft resolution that would “demand that the perpetrators of the aerial incident be brought to justice,” but would not see the establishment of a UN court.

The 15-member United Nations Security Council discussed both drafts on Monday, but did not come to a final decision.

What does Malaysia want?

The basic idea behind the Malaysian plan is to establish an ad hoc court, recognised by the United Nations, to which the prosecutors and detectives involved in a five-nation joint investigation of the MH17 incident would submit their final dossier.

The resolution is co-sponsored by Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Ukraine – the countries who, along with Malaysia, are members of the joint investigation team. Several other Western countries, including the United Kingdom, have voiced support for the idea.

Russia has vigorously opposed the proposals, saying that it is outside the UN’s realm of responsibility, and has indicated that it may use its Security Council veto to block such a tribunal.

The Russian draft resolution circulated on Monday would seek to increase UN involvement of the investigation, and expresses concern that the current investigation “does not ensure due transparency in its organisation and work methods, which may have a negative impact on its outcome”.

All 283 passengers and 15 crew on board were killed when the Boeing 777 airliner en-route from Amsterdam to Kuala-Lumpa was destroyed overeastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. Investigators have said that the "most likely scenario" is that it was shot down by a Buk surface-to-air missile launched from territory held-by Russian backed separatists.

What investigations are currently under way?

There are two investigations into MH17 under way, both led by the Netherlands. The first, a straightforward air-accident investigation, will report on the causes of the crash. A draft has already been sent out to interested governments, and a final copy is expected to be released in October.

A second investigation, led by Dutch detectives, is examining who was responsible for the crash. This criminal investigation is expected to run on at least to the end of the year, and will eventually present a dossier of evidence on which charges of murder and possibly war crimes will be based.

Prosecutors and governments would prefer to submit that dossier to an international court because of the number of countries involved – there were ten nationalities on board MH17, which was shot down over Ukrainian airspace, and there is speculation that suspects could include Russian citizens such as Igor Girkin/Strelkov, the commander of separatist forces in the region at the time of the disaster.

What other tribunals have there been?

The idea has been tried before – most famously with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, established by the UN Security Council in a similar resolution in 1993, and The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established in 1994.

But Russia argues it is “premature” to talk about a court before both investigations have submitted their reports. It has also expressed concern at the language in the document, which it says looks like a hastily-drawn up document designed to frame Russia, and argues that both the Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals have proved costly, inefficient, and failed to produce “acceptable results” despite sitting for more than 20 years.

Russian officials also point out that no other airliner shot down in incidents like this has been subject to a UN tribunal.

In the three most recent comparable incidents – Siberian Airlines 1812, shot down by Ukraine in 2001, Iran Air 655, shot down by a US warship in 1988, and Korean Air Lines 007, shot down by a Soviet fighter jet in 1983 (a case Russian spokesmen tend to overlook when talking about MH17), there was no criminal trial of any sort.

In all three cases, the governments involved refused to accept responsibility and the perpetrators were never prosecuted. And although both the Ukrainians and the Americans ended up paying compensation to the victims’ families in negotiated settlements, both insisted on clauses that specifically absolved them of legal liability for what happened.

By Roland Oliphant

Российские специалисты отстранены от расследования крушения Boeing 777 и в России не хотят трибунала

Постпред РФ при ООН Виталий Чуркин сообщил, что российские специалисты отстранены от расследования крушения малайзийского Boeing 777 на Украине. «Мы всегда продолжали выступать на тесное международное сотрудничества этой катастрофы. Получилось так, что наши эксперты практически от этого отстранены, расследование прошло само по себе»,— сказал господин Чуркин в эфире телеканал «Россия-24».

Он также прокомментировал проект резолюции СБ ООН по крушению самолета, заявив, что для расследования уголовных преступлений международный трибунал не нужен. По мнению Виталия Чуркина, у резолюции нет шансов на принятие.

ГПУ расшифровала данные, которые СБУ передавала в ФСБ во время Майдана.

Генпрокуратура смогла расшифровать данные, которые экс-чиновники Службы безопасности передавали в ФСБ России во время Майдана.
Об этом на брифинге в четверг сообщил главный военный прокурор Анатолий Матиос, передает "Интерфакс-Украина".
По его словам, данные передавались чиновниками СБУ в российскую ФСБ во время председательства Александра Якименко.
"Впервые нам удалось совместно с Киевским институтом судэкспертиз и Институтом спецтехники и судэкспертиз СБУ провести уникальные экспертизы - расшифровать данные, которые за весь период Революции достоинства пересылались из центрального аппарата СБУ в ФСБ РФ", - сообщил Матиос.
Матиос рассказал, что в ФСБ передавалась "как служебная информация, которая содержала соответствующие грифы "для служебного пользования", "секретно", "совершенно секретно", так и информация - нарезка кадров моделирования ситуации, что свидетельствовало о якобы радикальных шовинистических, антисемитских движениях".
Он сообщил, что моделировались заготовки картинок, которые переправлялись в соответствующий центр ФСБ РФ, где уже моделировались информационные сюжеты и распространялись через Интернет и рейтинговые информагентства.
"Это называется специальная операция в форме информационной войны", - подытожил Матиос.
Все это происходило, по словам Матиоса, "под неусыпным руководством и при присутствии офицеров ФСБ" – двух генералов, которым ГПУ уже выдвинула подозрения.
По словам военного прокурора, все эти данные позволили доказать вину генерала СБУ Владимира Быка, который был непосредственным исполнителем преступления.
Кроме того, эти расшифрованные данные будут основой для доказательной базы в уголовных процессах о других бывших руководителях СБУ.

Прикордонники у 2015 році не пустили до України 6 тисяч росіян

Як передає кореспондент УНІАН, про це повідомив помічник голови Державної прикордонної служби України Олег Слободян сьогодні на брифінгу в Києві.

«Всього за перше півріччя 2015 року через державний кордон України було пропущено 34,5 млн осіб та 8,5 млн транспортних засобів (без урахування зони АТО). За звітній період було відмовлено у пропуску через державний кордон понад 25 тисячам осіб, з них 6 тисяч – це громадяни РФ», - зазначив він.

Слободян додав, що за незаконний перетин кордону за 6 місяців було затримано майже 11 тисяч осіб, з яких 700 - незаконні мігранти.

«Під час незаконного переміщення через кордон було виявлено та вилучено 400 одиниць зброї, понад 8 тисяч одиниць боєприпасів, 28 кг вибухових та 78 кг наркотичних речовин», - наголосив помічник голови Держприкордонслужби.

Ukrainian helicopter pilot charged with murder as Moscow trial approaches

Nadia Savchenko, 34, a Ukrainian army helicopter pilot who has spent nearly a year in Russian jails, now stands accused of the murder of two Russian journalists

Nadezhda Savchenko following her capture last year

Russian investigators have upgraded the charges against Nadia Savchenko, as her lawyers said they expect her trial to begin this summer.

Miss Savchenko, 34, a Ukrainian army helicopter pilot who has spent nearly a year in Russian jails, now stands accused of the murder of two Russian journalists.

She was previously charged with complicity in the deaths of Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, two employees of Russia’s state owned VGTRK television holding who died while covering the war in Ukraine last year.

“They have toughened the charges – the prosecutors have changed their concept,” said Ilya Novikov, one of Miss Savchenko’s defence lawyers said on Tuesday.

The new charges were announced as investigators moved to bring the case to trial after nearly a year of gathering evidence.

Russia’s chief investigator said on Monday that the investigation had been completed and had been sent to prosecutors for confirmation of the indictment before submission to a court for consideration.

Vladimir Markin, the head of Russia’s powerful Investigative Committee, said Miss Savchenko’s case had been made part of a broader criminal investigation into “acts of genocide and use of illegal weapons and methods of warfare by the Ukrainian armed forces.”

“From the very beginning investigators came under intense pressure from Ukrainian and European human rights groups, but none the less they calmly brought the investigation to its logical conclusion,” Mr Markin said.

Mr Markin said the full list of charges includes murder of two or more people, complicity in murder by unusually dangerous methods, complicity in murder motivated by hatred of a social group by prior conspiracy, and illegally entering Russian territory.

No date has yet been set, but Mark Feygin, another of Savchenko’s defence team, said on Twitter he believed prosecutors had moved to bring forward case to court under pressure from the Kremlin.

“The prosecutors and the court, and behind them the Kremlin, are very interested in accelerating the case, and in particular this summer,” he wrote on Twitter.

He added that it is still unclear whether Miss Savchenko would be tried in Moscow or Rostov, the city where she was first charged.

Miss Savchenko, a lieutenant in the Ukrainian army and the country’s first female combat pilot, was captured by pro-Russian separatists while fighting alongside the Aidar volunteer battalion near the city of Luhansk on June 18 last year.

Russian prosecutors say she subsequently voluntarily crossed the border and attempted to seek asylum in Russia, where she was arrested and charged with acting as a spotter for a mortar attack that killed Mr Kornelyuk and Mr Voloshin on the same day.

Miss Savchenko and her lawyers maintain that she had nothing to do with the deaths of the journalists, was captured a full hour before the mortar strike that killed them, and that she was transported across the border against her will by Russian intelligence officers.

The case has made Miss Savchenko a national hero in Ukraine, where she was elected as an MP in absentia at parliamentary elections last October.

She has since been appointed a Ukrainian member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, in a move partly designed to put pressure on Russia to release her.

In March Petro Poroshenko, the president, made her a Hero of Ukraine – the country’s highest honour. In the same month Miss Savchenko ended an 83 day hunger strike in protest at her treatment.

But Mr Prosohenko has failed to secure her release, and Ukrainian diplomats have expressed frustration at what they describe as Russia’s efforts to use her as a “hostage” with which to pressure the Ukrainian government.

Russia has repeatedly rejected attempts by Ukrainian officials to get Miss Savchenko included in prisoner exchange deals with the Russian-backed separatists, saying she is a suspected criminal, not a prisoner of war.

Commenting on the case in November, Vladimir Putin said Miss Savchenko should be tried and “punished in accordance with the decision of the court” if found guilty.

By Roland Oliphant

Ukraine's 'history laws' purge it of communist symbols but divide the population

Lionising nationalists and removing Soviet monuments helps protect Ukraine from Russian aggression, supporters say - but others see praise for Nazi collaborators and an assault on the past

Yury Shukhevych, son of the leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during the Second World War

Almost blind and 82 years old, Yury Shukhevych leans heavily on a stick topped with an ornamental axe-head. “It’s a Hutsul axe from the Carpathians,” he says, with an impish smile. “You could cleave a head in two with this.”

His stooped body and eyes squeezed almost shut do not suggest much of a warrior, but Mr Shukheyvch has pedigree. His father, Roman, was the head of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a nationalist group that fought both the Germans and the Soviets during the Second World War, collaborating for a time with the Nazis.

For some in Ukraine, members of the UPA were heroic freedom fighters who resisted all intruders in an attempt to preserve a national homeland. But for others in this deeply divided country of 45 million people, they were traitorous fascists, bent on mass murder and ethnic cleansing.

Now the argument is being stirred anew after Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president, approved a series of controversial new “history laws” last month. Under one law, Ukraine is to be purged of communist symbols, including hundreds of statues of Vladimir Lenin. Under another, UPA veterans – and other 20th century “fighters for Ukrainian independence” –acquire a special status, making it illegal to express “public contempt” towards them or deny the legitimacy of their struggle.

The contentious laws feed into a wider battle for identity and survival as government troops fight pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbas region, where a ceasefire is disintegrating.

'Let the Russians not tell us who are our heroes'

Mr Shukhevych, an MP with the nationalist Radical Party since October, drafted the law on freedom fighters. He says his father and comrades resisted Moscow’s dominance and as a result were subjected to a Soviet – and now Russian - smear campaign.

“Let the Russians not tell us who are our heroes,” he says. Fighting together with the Germans against Soviet forces during the war was a temporary and pragmatic move for Ukrainian nationalists, Mr Shukhevych adds, and they did not sympathise with Nazi ideas.

“This is all Russian propaganda,” he says. “The Ukrainian people were denied their right to independence. How can this be? This is the legal right of every nation. We know of many nations that have fought for their independence, including in Europe. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland. Serbia against Bulgaria; Poland fought in the 19th century. Byron fought for the independence of Greece. So to deny the legitimacy of Ukraine’s struggle is illegal.”

Introducing the new legislation protecting the UPA drew a predictably frothing response from Russia, where Ukraine’s government is derided as a “fascist junta”. But it has also provoked disquiet in the West.

Ethnic cleansing

A group of 70 scholars on Ukraine appealed to Mr Poroshenko to call off the “history laws”, saying they would stifle debate and make it “a crime to question the legitimacy of an organisation (UPA) that slaughtered tens of thousands of Poles in one of the most heinous acts of ethnic cleansing in the history of Ukraine”.

The UPA was established as a guerrilla group in 1942. The previous year, Roman Shukhevych and other Ukrainian nationalists had formed the Nachtigall and Roland battalions under German command to support the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

^{Roman Shukhevych (seated, second from left) wearing German uniform in the Nachtigall Battalion (Simon Kruse)}

Members of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and UPA, its military wing, massacred between 60,000 and 100,000 Poles in Volhynia and Galicia, and also helped kill Jews, according to historians.

While the Communists were its main enemy, the UPA later turned on the Nazis too after Adolf Hitler failed to support the establishment of a Ukrainian state. The partisans continued to fight Soviet rule for several years after the war had ended.

A place of pilgrimage

Mr Shukhevych met the Telegraph in the former safe-house where his fugitive father hid and was finally assassinated in 1950 by agents of the MGB, predecessor of the KGB.

The house, on the edge of Lviv in western Ukraine, a nationalist stronghold, is now a museum and a place of pilgrimage. It was set up after the Soviet collapse in 1991 and funded by the descendants of UPA members who had fled to the US after the war.

Visitors come to see Roman Shukhevych’s wartime uniforms and a mock-up of a partisans’ forest bunker. In one wall of the house is a bullet-hole; left, it is said, when the UPA leader fired a final shot from his revolver as he was struck down by an MGB machine-gun volley. The shot was to warn his assistant to swallow a cyanide capsule.

^{A bust of Roman Shukhevych at the museum dedicated to him in Lviv, Ukraine (Simon Kruse)}

“We get a lot of men from the army and the volunteer battalions visiting before they go off to fight in Donbas,” says Volodymyr Karanda, the museum’s director, referring to the war against Moscow-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine, which has claimed more than 6,400 lives since April last year. “For them it’s an example of how to fight for one’s motherland even against uneven odds, an inspiration.”

Mr Karanda does not deny that the UPA murdered civilians in the 1940s, but he questions the scale of the killings and says they took place at the time of a ruthless, internecine conflict.

Mr Shukhevych, sitting at a table a few steps from where his father was shot, adds: “I don’t justify everything that was done. But we can also talk of tragedies.” The Poles killed many Ukrainians and destroyed churches, he said, while the Soviets slaughtered, deported and imprisoned millions.

'Lenin is a man with blood on his hands'

Besides giving status to the UPA, Mr Poroshenko’s new “history laws” make it a crime to deny the "criminal nature" of both the Nazi regime and the "communist totalitarian regime of 1917-1991 in Ukraine". Using their symbols is also banned – meaning that over the next year communist monuments will be pulled down, street names changed and souvenirs prohibited.

The aim is to “tear up the link with our Soviet past” says Mr Shukhevych, who spent more than 30 years in Soviet prisons and penal colonies because of his father. “We must understand that Lenin is a man with blood on his hands, a symbol of an anti-human system. He can be left in a museum but not on our streets.”

^{Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (Reuters)}

In Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, many see the new laws as part of an existential struggle in the face of Russian aggression.

Oleg Sinyakevich serves in the OUN Battalion, a volunteer unit which adopted its name from the wartime nationalist group. Last year he fought against Moscow-backed separatists around Donetsk airport.

UPA veterans are unfairly maligned as Hitler supporters, he says. During the Second World War, they “did not go to fight in Poland, or in Russia, or in Belarus. We did not go anywhere, we were in our own land. The fascists invaded, then the communists, then the fascists again. We fought the aggressor.

“It’s just the same now. Russia attacked us. Russia kills people, burns them alive, tells horror tales about us and then calls us fascists. Where’s the logic?”

Some say the laws make hero-worship compulsory

The “de-communisation law” was drafted by Ukraine’s Institute of National Memory, headed by Volodymyr Vyatrovych. He believes the uprising in Kiev last year which led to the ousting of Viktor Yanukovych, the president, was an “anti-Soviet” one.

“It is extremely important for Ukraine to have given a legal evaluation to the crimes of the communist period and to move away from that totalitarian past.”

Other former states of the USSR or Soviet bloc – like Poland or the Baltics - went through that process long ago and are now on an “irreversible” democratic path, says Mr Vyatrovych. “By contrast, in Belarus, especially in Russia and until recently in Ukraine, the failure to condemn the past has resulted in its gradual rehabilitation.”

The result, he says, was the hardline governments of Vladimir Putin and Mr Yanukovych, bringing censorship, political repression, and a fondness for calling Joseph Stalin "an effective manager" rather than a tyrant.

Yet some feel the history laws themselves veer towards intolerance.

Mikhail Pogrebinsky, a political analyst, says they are the initiative of a “party of victors” around Mr Poroshenko, who are unwilling to counter other points of view inside Ukraine, especially in the Russophone east.

“Glorifying UPA might be understandable if the country was only ‘Little Ukraine’ in the west and Kiev. But only about a third of the population supports the Russophobic, nationalistic viewpoint, and when they impose their will on the rest then I see a mass of problems ahead.”

The de-communisation law is an unnecessary “stupidity” that will only drive Donbas further away, Mr Pogrebinsky added, even as Kiev tries to claw it back from the separatists and Russia’s embrace.

Andrew Wilson, author of Ukraine Crisis, says one problem with the legislation is that it is “so prescriptive” and makes hero-worship compulsory. “The most controversial is OUN-UPA. Some people say they were heroes, some people say they were Nazis. The reality is that most of them were were locals just defending their local territories. But they did bad things, they did good things. You can’t say they were all heroes.”

Soviet lives

For many in Ukraine, Mr Wilson says, the anti-communist law jars because Lenin is less a political symbol than a reminder of lived experience, and “they don’t want that entire Soviet part of their lives dismissed”.

Inevitably, opposition to the history laws is strongest in Donbas, where the Moscow-backed rebels cherish their links to the communist past, recalling the relative prosperity of this coal-mining region. In the rebels' eyes, members of the Kiev government are “Banderovites” – a reference to Stepan Bandera, another Ukrainian nationalist who dallied with the Nazis. With a distinctly Soviet ring, the rebels call their separatist territories “People’s Republics”.

By contrast, in Ukrainian government-controlled territory demonstrators have already torn down scores of Lenin statues, Yet hundreds more remain across the country and in many places there is deep ambivalence over the Bolshevik leader’s future. There, his likeness lives on – for now.

One such spot is the city of Zaporizhia on a bottleneck in the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine. Zaporizhia is known for its Lenin Hydroelectric Power Plant, its Lenin Avenue – one of the longest avenues in Europe – and its 66ft tall Lenin monument, erected in 1964.

At least twice since last year activists have gathered by the imposing statue to discuss his toppling. Other residents quickly surrounded Lenin to protect him. As a compromise, a crane was used to put a traditional embroidered Ukrainian shirt over his torso. It was later removed.

Oleksandr Sin, the city’s mayor, says that more than 70 per cent of townsfolk are against removing Lenin. Reluctantly, he has decided to comply with the law, and hopes to rebrand the city by replacing him with a statue of a 17th century Cossack leader. Soviet street names will also get Cossack replacements.

Denis Bushtets, 36, a Zaporozhiya resident, says he is against the plan. A former advertising manager, he now volunteers to deliver pork fat and other food supplies to Ukrainian troops at the front. “I’m a patriot but I don’t want Lenin to go,” he tells the Telegraph. “People think we’ll take him down and – ‘bang’ - we’re all Europeans and all the holes in the roads get filled. It doesn’t work like that. It’s the mentality you need to change.”

Goodbye Lenin, hello Superman

The Zaporozhia Lenin statue stands at the end of Lenin Avenue, his arm raised towards the huge sweep of the dam which he conceived and which was built not long after his death in 1924.

“I want him to stay, he’s part of our landscape, our history,” says Valentina, a hotel receptionist who works nearby. “My grandmother came here in the 1930s to help build the hydro-electric plant. I visited Lenin on trips as a Pioneer and my girlfriends all had their wedding pictures taken next to him.

“Taking him down and changing all the communist street names will cost a lot of money. The country is at war and the economy is falling apart. Let’s feed people first.”

^{Yury Barannik wants the city’s Lenin statue removed (Simon Kruse)}

Yury Barannik does not agree. An artist, he is curator of the ironically named Lenin modern art gallery on a street corner by the statue.

“Lenin was a criminal, he wrote orders for executions,” he says. “If there was debate and people of the communist generation repented and admitted they were wrong then perhaps we could do without a law to remove all this. But they won’t.”

To ease the process of getting rid of Lenin Mr Barannik has been holding workshops where students sketch alternatives for his vacated square: a swimming pool, a concert hall, a Superman statue and a marble toilet.

At the hydro-electric plant, Viktor Kucher, its general director, is tight lipped. Inside the turbine hall, a large socialist-realist painting shows senior Bolsheviks opening the dam in 1932.

As a state enterprise, the plant would comply with the new laws and remove its Lenin nameplate and hammer and sickle emblems from the doors if ordered to do so, he says.

Leading the Telegraph on a two-hour excursion of the dam, Mr Kucher preferred to talk about the squirrels and pheasants in its 43-hectare grounds rather than the politics of the past.

“Any change means upset,” he says.

By Tom Parfitt