Kiev risked drawing further Moscow fury on Thursday by approving the construction of an open-air museum devoted to seven decades of Soviet "occupation" of Ukraine. The city council instructed the Ukrainian capital's authorities to agree on a single location that could display all remaining communist-era symbols and monuments - now officially banned - after being converted into a public park.
A top Ukrainian culture ministry official had earlier said the controversial exhibit would help various generations remember and learn about "the crimes committed by the totalitarian Soviet regime in Ukraine". The Kiev council voted in May to remove all remnants of its Soviet past from across the city of 2.8 million by August 24. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union from the communist state's inception in 1922 to its collapse under the dual pressures of economic depression and regional separatism in 1991.
Kiev's close ties with Moscow began to unravel during a first pro-democracy revolution in Ukraine in 2004 that was repeated again in much more tragic circumstances two years ago. Over a hundred people died in the protests that led to the Moscow-backed regime's February 2014 ouster - most of them in a three-day spree of violence in which police opened fire on civilians.
The nation of about 40 million has been riven by a bloody insurgency since ex-president Viktor Yanukovych's administration was replaced by a pro-Western government seeking membership of the European Union and Nato. The Kremlin denies playing part in the 15-month conflict and condemns Kiev for alleged persecuting ethnic Russians, both in Kiev and the war-torn east. There was no immediate official reaction to Kiev's decision from Moscow. The Ukrainian capital already has a tiny "Soviet occupation" museum that was opened in a two-room apartment by the Moscow-based Memorial human rights organisation nearly a decade ago.
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