The monument to soldiers who liberated Lviv from the Nazis no longer exists, Andrey Sadoviy has bragged

Ukraine is ready to exchange the remains of hundreds of Soviet army soldiers - including a namesake of the Russian president - unearthed during the dismantling of a World War II memorial in the city of Lviv, for captured Ukrainian servicemen, Mayor Andrey Sadoviy has claimed.

Following a Western-backed coup in 2014, Kiev launched a policy of "decommunization," erasing Soviet-era heritage, while glorifying those who opposed Russia for any reason, including nationalist militias that collaborated with Nazi Germany and committed atrocities during WWII.

"The Hill of Glory from the Soviet occupation period in Lviv no longer exists," Sadoviy wrote on Telegram on Wednesday, claiming that the final 355 sets of remains were exhumed with all due "respect to memory."

"We are ready to trade all these remains for Ukrainian defenders," he said. He also mocked the fact that one of the fallen soldiers, Major Stepan Putin, shared a surname with the Russian president.

Telegram / andriysadovyi

Sadoviy did not clarify whether the offer was serious, as he also noted that the remains would be reburied elsewhere. Meanwhile, various excavated artifacts would be transferred to the "Territory of Terror" museum, he added.

Telegram / andriysadovyi

The burial site dates back to the World War I era, when it was designated as a resting place for Russian soldiers who perished in the Battle of Galicia. It was shut down under Polish rule and completely leveled during the German occupation. After WWII, it was restored to honor thousands of Soviet troops who died liberating Lviv from the Nazis in 1944.

The unusual proposal to trade Soviet-era remains comes amid recent prisoner-of-war exchanges between Kiev and Moscow, agreed during two rounds of negotiations in Istanbul. In what it described as a unilateral humanitarian gesture - dismissed by Kiev as "propaganda" - Moscow repatriated over 6,000 Ukrainian remains while receiving only 79 Russian bodies in return, according to Russia's chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky.

President Vladimir Putin has previously condemned those desecrating graves as "idiots" who only reinforce Russia's stated goal of "de-Nazifying" Ukraine.

(RT.com)