Poland decommissions Soviet monument, Russia protests

On 31 July 2026 the town of Pyrzyce in western Poland dismantled a Soviet‑era war memorial that had stood in the city centre since 1984. The demolition, carried out with a large excavator, was attended by the town mayor and a deputy of the Institute of National Remembrance, who described the monument as Soviet propaganda. The removal follows a 2022 call by the Institute, intensified after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to eliminate Soviet symbols; it is the latest in a series of similar actions across the West Pomeranian region and Poland as a whole. The site is to be renamed Independence Square and will receive a new monument celebrating Polish independence, while parts of the former structure will be transferred to a local museum and a municipal cemetery.

Following the demolition, the Russian Embassy in Poland lodged an official protest, labeling the act “illegal” and “sacrilegious” and claiming it breaches a 1994 bilateral agreement on graves and memory sites. Polish officials rejected the complaint and reiterated plans for a new independence monument, underscoring the removal as an implementation of Poland’s 2016 law banning the promotion of communist symbols.