The municipal services started to dismantle the monument to Catherine II in Odessa

According to Kommersant with reference to local media, preparatory work on the dismantling of the monument has been underway since November 6.

The monument to the founders of Odessa - Catherine II and her associates Grigory Potemkin, Platon Zubov, Joseph de Ribas and Franz de Volan was erected in 1900. It is a column on a pedestal, on top of which Catherine the Second is depicted, in a little lower – the other founders of Odessa. After the revolution of 1917, in the wake of the struggle against the "legacy of tsarism" in 1920, the monument was dismantled. However, in 2007, the monument was restored, despite the presence of political contradictions in society.

After the beginning of the military special operation of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine in 2022, the demolition of monuments related to Russia began throughout the country, as well as the renaming of geographical names consonant with the names of Russian politicians, scientists, and cultural figures. Some citizens began to call Catherine the Second "the destroyer of Ukrainian statehood and culture." Vandals repeatedly doused the monument with paint, and in early November, an executioner's cap was placed on the head of the empress, and a gallows was attached next to it. After there was a petition for the demolition of the monument, the authorities said that those who want to dismantle the monument are the majority. Discussions began about moving the monument to the park of the imperial and Soviet past. However, not all residents of Odessa welcomed the plans of the authorities to demolish the monument to the founders of the city. After the mayor of Odessa, Gennady Trukhanov, expressed doubts in the media about the expediency of demolishing the monument, the President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, offered to check Trukhanov for reliability.