In Zaporozhye, unknown persons removed a poster depicting Adolf Hitler, which was hung on the main street. reports this Interfax . Presumably, this was done by utility workers. The poster was previously placed on the wall of a house in the city center on the initiative of local journalists, thus expressing their protest against the installation of a monument to Joseph Stalin in Zaporozhye.

The initiators of hanging the poster were journalists from the Saturday Plus weekly. “We were thinking about how to respond to the installation of a monument to Stalin in Zaporozhye,” said the publication’s editor-in-chief Bogdan Vasilenko. “We decided that a billboard with a caricature of Hitler could be a response to the communist provocation. If there was a place in the city for Stalin, then for balance it could be installed and Hitler."

For this purpose, journalists rented space for outdoor advertising. “We had to deal with a number of outdoor advertising operators who refused to provide us with space for a billboard. Only one company agreed for three thousand hryvnia (about $375) per month,” Vasilenko noted.

The poster was placed in the city center (at the end of the building at the height of the fifth floor) on December 6. Hitler, throwing up his hands in disappointment, is depicted against the background of a monument to Stalin. Next to it is written: “Why am I worse than Stalin? Build a monument to me too!” At the bottom of the poster there is the weekly logo and the call “Let's rid the city of shame!” (the call, as Vasilenko explained, concerns the monument to Stalin).

The poster only hung for a few hours. “The billboard was removed by unknown people without our permission, the owners of the plane,” Vasilenko said. Journalists called the police. The police, as the editor said, said that the poster was removed by utility workers. At the same time, according to Vasilenko, the head of the Zaporozhye administration did not give the corresponding instructions.

The editor of the publication also reported that the advertising agency that posted the poster was receiving threatening calls from unknown persons.

According to Vasilenko, journalists will make sure that the poster is returned to its original place (considering that they paid for the advertising space). “We will also, together with law enforcement agencies, look for those who did not like the billboard, which is a protest against the installation of a monument to Stalin,” he added.

The monument to Joseph Stalin, erected near the Zaporozhye branch of the Communist Party of Ukraine, has been repeatedly attacked by vandals in the past. So, in December 2010, the head of the sculpture was sawed off, and later it was blown up. In November 2011, the monument to Stalin was re-erected in its original location.

A poster with Hitler disappeared in Zaporozhye