The “Twin Hearts” installation, celebrating St. Petersburg’s “brotherhood” with Mariupol, the Ukrainian city razed to the ground by the Russian military, has been returned to the Palace Square in St. Petersburg.
Earlier, the decorative display was removed, after a local teenager scrawled a message of protest across the installation. “Murderers, you bombed it to rubble. Judases,” the high-school senior wrote in black paint. The display was promptly dismantled for cleaning.
The installation first appeared in Palace Square on December 13.
Fontanka previously reported that the protest graffiti had been scrawled by a 16-year-old schoolgirl. Other sources attribute it to a 17-year-old high-school senior, reporting that she has been charged with “discrediting” the Russian armed forces.
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.
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