Ukraine removes largest Lenin's statue.
Ukraine has destroyed its largest remaining monument to Vladimir Lenin by tearing down a giant statue of the Soviet leader.
Standing imposingly in the city of Zaporizhzhya in Ukraine, the 66-ft bronze statue was finally removed by crane after several attempts to pull it down earlier this week.
Since a pro-Western uprising ousted a Russia-backed president in 2014, Ukraine has passed laws aimed at severing the former Soviet republic from its communist past.
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Statue: Workers dismantle the huge monument to Vladimir Lenin in the city of Zaporizhzhya in Ukraine
The 60-year-old bronze statue, which depicts the Russian revolutionary holding one arm aloft, was finally brought to the ground by a crane after workers loosened its base.
It now joins the nearly 1,000 other statues of Lenin that have been removed since his Kiev monument was pulled down in late 2013.
A spokeswoman for the local mayor's office said: 'It would be easy to demolish it: place an explosive, blow it up and everything, but to take it down carefully and transport it to a storage place for totalitarian statues needs more care.
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She added: 'The papers on how it was built are all in Moscow, so it's being taken down with a method of trial and error.
'Relations aren't so friendly at the moment that they (Russian authorities) would reply quickly to a query.'
Pro-Ukrainian activists had previously made fun of the monument by dressing Lenin in a traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirt and the national soccer team's yellow jersey.
Pro-Ukrainian activists made fun of the statue, pictured right being dismantled, by placing a traditional embroidered shirt over it
A webcam broadcasting live footage of the statue's removal attracted thousands of views.
The accompanying commentary highlighted how polarised the region had become through the 2013-14 uprising, Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and the ensuing pro-Russian separatist conflict in which over 9,000 have been killed.
The laws on 'decommunisation' were passed by parliament last May and their implementation has gathered pace in recent months.
The 60-year-old bronze statue will now be kept in a facility along with other monuments to totalitarianism
Besides removing Soviet monuments, the programme plans to rename 941 cities, towns and villages, according to data from the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory.
In December, Amnesty International said Ukraine had flagrantly violated freedom of expression by banning the Community party under the new legislation.
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