‘Murderers, you bombed it to rubble’: Graffiti prompts removal of St. Petersburg display celebrating city’s ‘brotherhood’ with Mariupol
A decorative display with two hearts — the greater one inscribed “St. Petersburg,” and the one beside it “Mariupol” — had to be removed from the Palace Square, after a teenage girl scrawled on it in black paint: “Murderers, you bombed it to rubble. Judases.”
Workers in the Palace Square told the Russian publication Bumaga that the display, installed on December 12, will remain partially dismantled until cleared of the paint.
A bystander who watched the disassembly of the Mariupol display told the journalists that the city’s name was spelled on it incorrectly: instead of the Russian “и,” it should have been spelled with a Ukrainian dotted “i,” he said.
Fontanka reports that that the high-school senior who wrote the message of protest has been charged with a misdemeanor.
On June 1, St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov announced the city’s commitment to the patronage of Mariupol as its “brother city.” A partnership agreement was signed by Beglov and Konstantin Ivashchenko, appointed mayor of Mariupol by the Russian-installed authorities of the self-proclaimed “DNR.” Beglov said that St. Petersburg would rebuild Mariupol, including its Regional Drama Theater, where a large number of civilians were killed in a Russian air raid.