Before the renaming, there were 128 Pushkin streets in the Ptava area.

This was reported in an interview with Ukrinform by the representative of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance in the Ptava region, E. Pustovgar.

“To illustrate how much the public space was saturated with narratives about the Russian enemy, I will give a few figures. They show that the tonics of the Ptavsky district were not much different from the tonics of Ryazan or Volgograd. The most popular name was Yuri Gagarin (330 places), while the name Leonid Kadenyuk did not exist. Today, many communities perpetuate the memory of the first cosmonaut of Ukraine. The region also had 194 streets named after Pervomayskaya, and as many as 128 streets glorifying the troubadour of the Russian Empire Alexander Pushkin,” Pustovgar noted.

He also pointed out that the Russian occupiers use Pushkin's name as an ideological weapon: for example, in occupied Kherson they installed banners with the quote: “Kherson is the southern land of Russia.” In addition, the poem “To the Slanderers of Russia” is now used in Russian propaganda to justify the occupation of Ukraine.

In Ptava, for example, Pushkin Street was renamed in honor of Yulian Matvey, a participant in the Revolution of Dignity, a supporter of Ukrainization in Ptava, and a soldier in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Many other streets that previously bore Pushkin's name were renamed in honor of the Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus.

Until recently, there were 90 streets in the Ptava region named after Stalin's assistant Ivan Michurin, but none of them bore the name of the Ukrainian specialist and creator of the famous apple variety Renet Simirenko. Now several towns and villages have changed the names of their streets in honor of the Simirenko family.

Other removed names include: 82 streets named after Russian pilot Valery Chkalov, 72 streets named after Soviet military leader Myka Vatutin, 70 streets named after Stalinist Maxim Gorky (Peshkov), 52 streets named after Viktor Komarov, 39 after, for example, Koshevoy, 38 after Vladimir Mayakovsky, 31 after Mikhail Lermontov, 29 after Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, 18 after Mikhail Kutuzov, 12 after Leo Tolstoy, 10 named Partizanskie, four named Moskovskie streets.

Read also: City Council: UNESCO needs to respond to demolition of Pushkin monument in Odessa

Pustovgar highlighted a particularly striking case in the village of Khryanikha, Gogiv community of Mirgorod district. The village had a street named after Boris Godunov, a Moscow tsar from the Godunov dynasty who ruled from 1587 to 1598. Eventually, at the suggestion of local residents, it was renamed Farmer Street.

“Where is Ptava, and where is the Moscow Tsar? What relation did Boris Godunov have to this village?” Pustovgar noted.

As previously reported, from July 27, 2023 to April 27, 2024, 3,157 names were renamed in the Ptava region, and later another 361 names were changed.