TROSTYANETS, Ukraine -- Photos from the newly recaptured northeastern Ukrainian city of Trostyanets in March 2022 showed perhaps the most strikingly ironic image of the Russian invasion. A preserved Soviet T-34 that was part of the battalion to seize Trostyanets from Nazi control in 1943 remained on its plinth above a wasteland of shattered modern Russian vehicles.
Now the tank is set to be removed as part of a restoration project currently still in the planning stages.
The 2022 images had led to calls from some online to preserve the T-34 as a symbol of this "mad war” that had survived two very different conflicts involving the Kremlin.
Trostyanets, a city of around 20,000 that lies 32 kilometers from the Russian border, endured occupation for a month and was heavily damaged by fighting. Local authorities say more than 50 civilians were killed during the Russian occupation.
In an apartment block in front of the tank monument that is now charred by fire, Yuri Smirnov survived the intense artillery battle that destroyed the Russian armor.
“I saw a lot,” he says of the battle that led to the Russian retreat in the final days of March 2022. “It was very hot. There was a lot of metal flying. None of us were showing our faces. If you walked outside, you would be cut down” he says. “Even inside the apartment the brick walls were wobbling back and forth from the blasts. I tried to put out the fire [that gutted the apartment block], but there was no stopping it.”
Smirnov says he supports the decision to remove the tank.
“Put it somewhere else,” he says, adding, “We don’t need to replace it with anything. Just make the square a nice place to walk through again.”
On a bench outside a shop near the tank monument, Nastya Shellest says she doesn’t see the reason for its impending removal.
“I used to bus past it all the time as a child," she says. "I don’t understand why it needs to be removed now.”
Trostyanets Mayor Yuriy Bova told RFE/RL that the tank is likely to be installed in a nearby memorial to fallen WWII soldiers, “but it will have to be repaired.”
He added that the decision to remove the tank was made unanimously by councilors. The T-34 monument suffered a direct hit during the battle for Trostyanets that shunted the tank askew and shattered some of its wheels.
David Marples, a British-Canadian academic who was a vocal critic of Ukraine’s “decommunization” laws, told RFE/RL that the removal of the tank is indicative of a general shift of feeling toward Soviet and Russian monuments in Ukraine.
“In 2018, after the Memory Laws were passed, numerous statues came down, but those pertaining to [WWII] were left alone,” Marples says. “Recently, the attitude to these has hardened, too, so I think not only the Trostyanets tank but many others could also be removed.”
