At the beginning of June 2024, messages circulated on social networks that one of the landmarks of the Ukrainian capital was painted in rainbow colors as part of the Pride celebrations. We have verified the accuracy of this news.
June in many countries counts Pride month is when demonstrations and other events dedicated to LGBTQ+ rights take place there. On June 3, 2024, posts appeared on the Internet, the authors of which stated: in honor of the Pride, the Kyiv authorities repainted the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People, previously known as the Arch of Friendship of Peoples. As confirmation, publications were often accompanied by a video, which, for example, Telegram channel “Evil proof️“(203,000 views) commented: “In view of the approaching gay pride season in Geyropa, crests also decided to keep up and painted the People’s Friendship Arch in LGBT colors.”
According to the TGStat service, at the time of writing this analysis, more than 200 similar publications appeared on Telegram, which in total received about 2 million views. So, TV presenter channels wrote about repainting the arch Olesya Loseva (14,000 views) and Oscar Kucera (29,000), as well as "Observer"(213,000), "Uncle Slava"(198,000), Voblya (142,000), "Urgently, now" (48,000), "Mriya"(45,000), "Batkovich"(40,000), "Boiling water" (38,000) and "DPR info"(32,000). Similar posts appeared in public pages on VKontakte (examples here, here And here), and the Tsargrad TV channel wrote about the repainting of the Kyiv landmark on its page in “Zene"
The Arch of Peoples' Friendship was erected in Kyiv in the early 1980s, and on May 14, 2022, the authorities of the Ukrainian capital renamed her into the Freedom Arch of the Ukrainian People. Mayor of the city Vitaliy Klitschko explainedthat this was done as part of the decommunization policy. On April 17, 2024, by the decision of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, the arch was seized from the register of immovable monuments and cultural heritage sites. In a statement from the department noted, that thereby the monument has lost its status as a historical monument and can be dismantled. However, on April 25, the Department of Culture of the Kyiv City State Administration reported, that the capital will not dismantle one of the “calling cards of the city,” but the space around it will be reorganized.
In the video being distributed, the arch is shown from several angles, and the rainbow colors are actually visible on its arch. Note that only five colors are applied to the monument (orange, yellow, green, blue and purple), while the classic LGBT flag — six-color (red is added to the above). At the same time, in the center of the video there is a caption with an alleged quote from the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, Anton Drobovich: “The former Arch of Peoples’ Friendship does not have to be demolished. Another option is to turn it into an LGBT symbol.”
Similar words Drobovich really pronounced in an interview with the Interfax-Ukraine agency published on May 20. In the conversation, he said that dismantling the arch “from the point of view of content and context is more natural,” but noted that it can be preserved “if the city and the community truly rethink it.” The journalist recalled that Drobovich had previously expressed the idea of painting the arch in the colors of the rainbow, and asked whether this would be advisable, given the “previous attempt” and the ongoing stigmatization of the LGBTQ+ community in Ukraine. The head of the Institute of National Memory responded as follows:
“I see three scenarios for the development of events around this object. The first scenario is complete dismantling. The second option is to leave everything as it is, and then there will be forced dismantling, because sooner or later the citizens themselves will do it, as they did with Lenin. The third option is to leave the arch and make, as in 2017, a rainbow from it as a symbol of LGBT or simply a symbol of a rainbow over the water. Why did I personally like the rainbow the most out of all the previous options? Because she is the only one who really gives a different meaning.”
Both the interviewer and Drobovich spoke about a previous attempt to decorate the arch in rainbow colors, made in 2017, when Kyiv hosted Eurovision. Contest passed under the slogan Celebrate Diversity (“Celebrate diversity!”), and the project to decorate the monument called Arc of Diversity However, the arch was not completely repainted - in fact, it was started seal up stripes of multi-colored film. Do it until the end failed because of the outbreak of protests, right-wing activists (including from the Right Sector and the Svoboda party) saw in the project “hidden LGBT propaganda” and blocked work. They were not embarrassed that the arch had been there for many years built-in multi-colored lighting, thanks to which the structure glowed like a rainbow in the dark.
Verified did not find any reports that the monument would be decorated with rainbow colors again in 2024. We also did not find any pictures or videos confirming this on social networks.
The video, which spread across pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, was filmed in 2017, as many signs indicate. For example, from some angles under the arch you can see bronze statues of Ukrainian and Russian workers (00:01–00:02) and a granite sculptural group in honor of the Pereyaslav Rada (00:14–00:17). They were dismantled in April 2022 And in April 2024 years respectively. In addition, the video being distributed shows the same people in the same clothes that decorated the arch seven years ago, and at the end of the video the same sections of the structure that didn't have time decorate in 2017 due to protests.
Satirical Telegram channel "Biden's underpants"(12,000 views) in a similar publication posted on June 4, 2024, he used not a video, but a photograph with the caption: "They did it after all. That same arch was repainted in LGBT colors.” "Verified" found out that the picture shown was done in Kyiv on May 4, 2017 by a Reuters correspondent.
At the end of Eurovision 2017, the film remaining on the arch removed. Subsequently, the monument was again used for installations. Thus, in November 2018, as a sign of solidarity with Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russian prisons, at the People’s Friendship Arch appeared image in the form of a crack.
Thus, in June 2024, the Freedom Arch of the Ukrainian People in Kyiv was not painted in the colors of the LGBT flag in honor of Pride Month. A video from seven years ago was distributed on the RuNet - it shows a monument on which multi-colored ribbons were pasted in honor of the Eurovision Song Contest being held in the Ukrainian capital.
Cover photo: hmarochos.kiev.ua / Gennadiy Kurochka (Facebook)
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