Since April 2015, the Ukrainian authorities have renamed more than 51,000 place names, including 1,000 cities and towns, 26 districts, 75 academic institutions, 30 railway stations and several ports, replacing Soviet-imposed names with Ukrainian ones, Anton Drobovych, head of the Kyiv Institute of National Memory, says.
And as part of this same effort, officials have removed about 2,500 Soviet-era statues from public places. Just over half of these are statues of Vladimir Lenin; and at the present time, there are only three statues to the founder of the Bolshevik state remaining in Ukraine. All three are in Odesa Oblast, whose officials pledge to remove them and 19 other Soviet symbols soon.