Soviet hammer and sickle is out, Ukrainian trident is in on towering Kyiv monument

The towering Mother Ukraine statue in Kyiv had its Soviet hammer and sickle replaced Sunday by Ukraine’s trident coat of arms. The towering Mother Ukraine statue in Kyiv — one of the nation’s most recognizable landmarks — lost its hammer and sickle symbol Sunday as officials replaced the Soviet-era emblem with the country’s own trident coat of arms. Erected in 1981 as part of a larger complex housing the national World War II museum, the 200-foot-tall Mother Ukraine monument stands on the right bank of the Dnipro River in Kyiv, facing east toward Moscow. In a statement about the emblem’s removal, the website of Ukraine’s national World War II museum described the Soviet coat of arms as a symbol of a totalitarian regime that “destroyed millions of people.” “Together with the coat of arms, we’ve disposed the markers of our belonging to the ‘post-Soviet space.’ We are not ‘post-’, but sovereign, independent and free Ukraine.”