Decommunization has reached Antarctica. Members of the 27th Ukrainian Antarctic Expedition (UAE) carried out a large-scale repair of the sign near the Akademik Vernadsky station. On it are placed signs with the names and distances to different cities.
For the most part, these are settlements from which our winterers come from or where colleagues from other countries came to us from. Since the sign had served for more than 20 years, it needed to be updated both physically and in content, Ukrainian polar explorers said.
Doctor Vasily Matkovsky and mechanic Maxim Bilous restored a number of old rusted signs, for example, Cherkasy, Kiev, Malin, Lvov, Kharkiv, Warsaw, Rothera (British station) and others, “decommunized” Kirovohrad to Kropyvnytskyi, and also “derussified” the transliteration of Vinnitsa and Odessa.
In addition, new symbolic cities were added to the index — Mariupol, Kherson and Bucha (they were first placed on the index after the liberation of Kherson in November 2022), Kolomyia and Ivano-Frankivsk (native to Vasily), New York, Ottawa and the capitals ( or iconic cities) of other countries supporting Ukraine.
Each expedition has a tradition of improving our station, which becomes a second home for a year. We decided to do it in this way, – said Vasily Matkovsky about the initiative.
He explained that it all started with the idea to add a sign of Mariupol so that every visitor to the station could see: Ukrainians remember the city by the Ukrainian sea, where life was seething, and sometime very soon it will seethe again in free Ukraine.
The UAE believes that soon Ukrainian Yalta, Melitopol, Donetsk, Luhansk and our other temporarily occupied cities will appear on the sign.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.