A man restored the Pushkin monument in Tatarbunary after renovating his home

The Tatarbunar City Council in the Odesa region stated that it had no involvement in the restoration of the bust of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. It was repaired by a local resident on his own initiative.

This is reported in an article by "Bessarabia INFORM."

Earlier, photos of the restored Pushkin bust appeared online. The organization “Decolonization. Ukraine” accused the city council of attempting to preserve a monument that the Ministry of Culture had removed from the State Register of Immovable Monuments in February.

Journalists contacted the Tatarbunary City Council asking for an explanation of the situation. City officials denied any involvement in the work.

They stated that not a single kopeck from the budget had been spent on the restoration, and that the local government only learned that someone had repainted and replastered the monument from media reports.

According to the city council,the “restorer” turned out to be a local resident who lives near the monument. He had been doing repairs at home and had some unused cement left over.

The man noticed that plaster was falling off the neglected bust in chunks. So he patched up the cracks and reinforced the damaged parts so that, in his words, “it wouldn’t collapse.”

City officials emphasized that the man’s actions had no ideological, political, or pro-Russian undertones. Therefore, it is difficult to even call him an activist; this was purely a neighbor’s act of civic-mindedness.

The Tatarbunar City Council states that it is fully complying with the procedure outlined in the Law of Ukraine “On the Condemnation and Prohibition of Propaganda of Russian Imperial Policy.”

Previously, the city council had been awaiting an official opinion from the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, without which the removal of such objects is legally impossible. Currently, according to the city council, they have already officially received this clarification from the institute.

Journalists from the publication also visited the monument. According to their observations, the bust of Pushkin still appears to be chipped.

Ірина Глухова