14 June 2026
(PHOTO: The Decolonization of Ukraine)
Activists from the civil society organization "Decolonization.Ukraine" have once again updated their map listing the streets they believe should be renamed, reducing the number of such streets in the Odesa region.
As the activists noted, the number of such place names decreased from 139 as of December 5, 2025, to 135 as of June 12, 2026.
Odesa region ranks fifth in Ukraine by this indicator, trailing Zaporizhzhia, where 987 streets require decolonization, Kharkiv region—264, Kyiv region—199, and Vinnytsia region—188. At the same time, according to activists, the decrease occurred in all leading regions.
As for Odesa region’s southern neighbors—Mykolaiv and Kherson regions— the number of un-decolonized streets has also decreased, from 59 in December 2025 to 58 in June 2026 in Mykolaiv Oblast and from 60 to 56 over the same period in Kherson Oblast.
"Decolonization. Ukraine" regularly updates its maps of place names that need to be renamed to shed the Russian past, and Odesa Oblast consistently ranks fifth in terms of the number of non-decolonized names. At the same time, activists note that the process of decolonization in Ukraine has been fully completed in some regions, such as Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, where not a single place name remains undecolonized. Transcarpathia is also close to this goal, with two un-decolonized place names as of June 12, 2026; Khmelnytskyi Oblast has five; and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast has seven.
However, in Odesa Oblast, decolonization extends beyond just streets; as in February 2026, the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine added the monument to Alexander II in Odesa to the list of cultural heritage sites deemed ineligible for inclusion in the State Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine. In March, unknown individuals damaged the Alexander Column—a monument considered a symbol of Russian imperialism.
Кирило Бойко