The Polish city of Rzeszów has begun removing the Monument of Gratitude to the Red Army, a Soviet-era statue erected shortly after World War Two that stands 8.5 metres tall and weighs 6.6 tons. The monument, located on Ghetto Victims Square in southeastern Poland, has been the subject of a legal and political battle amid Poland's wider decommunisation efforts. The provincial governor and the Institute of National Remembrance argued the monument glorifies communism, while the city challenged this, leading to a 2019 court ruling in the city's favor. Since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the city decided to relocate the monument instead of demolishing it, moving bas-reliefs to a Soviet cemetery and the statue of mother and child to the city's Museum of Technology and the Military. The removal work started in late September 2026 and is expected to last until November. The Russian embassy in Warsaw condemned the removal as a 'barbaric' and 'sacrilegious' act, demanding cessation and restoration of the monument. Russia claims this violates the 1994 Russian-Polish agreement on memorial heritage sites, a claim disputed by Poland which notes that the agreement pertains only to graves and cemeteries, not monuments. Rzeszów also hosts the 38-metre-tall Monument to the Revolutionary Struggle, which was protected from removal in 2025. The city paid 156,000 zloty (€35,700) for the removal. The monument featured bas-reliefs of Red Army generals Ivan Konev and Karol Świerczewski and symbolic imagery including a hammer and sickle, with a statue of a woman and child at the top.

The Polish city of Rzeszów has begun removing the Monument of Gratitude to the Red Army, a Soviet-era statue erected shortly after World War Two that stands 8.5 metres tall and weighs 6.6 tons. The monument, located on Ghetto Victims Square in southeastern Poland, has been the subject of a legal and political battle amid Poland's wider decommunisation efforts. The provincial governor and the Institute of National Remembrance argued the monument glorifies communism, while the city challenged this, leading to a 2019 court ruling in the city's favor. Since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the city decided to relocate the monument instead of demolishing it, moving bas-reliefs to a Soviet cemetery and the statue of mother and child to the city's Museum of Technology and the Military. The removal work started in late September 2026 and is expected to last until November. The Russian embassy in Warsaw condemned the removal as a 'barbaric' and 'sacrilegious' act, demanding cessation and restoration of the monument. Russia claims this violates the 1994 Russian-Polish agreement on memorial heritage sites, a claim disputed by Poland which notes that the agreement pertains only to graves and cemeteries, not monuments. Rzeszów also hosts the 38-metre-tall Monument to the Revolutionary Struggle, which was protected from removal in 2025. The city paid 156,000 zloty (€35,700) for the removal. The monument featured bas-reliefs of Red Army generals Ivan Konev and Karol Świerczewski and symbolic imagery including a hammer and sickle, with a statue of a woman and child at the top.