Officials in the Russian village of Pereslavskoye are taking heat for replacing the eternal flame at a World War Two memorial with a piece of painted cardboard.
Russian media reported the war memorial in Pereslavskoye, north of Kaliningrad, has been outfitted with a cardboard slab painted with red and yellow flames while authorities wait for a gas line to be connected to the monument.
Although President Vladimir Putin in 2014 ordered all of Russia’s eternal flames to be continuously kept ablaze, officials in Pereslavskoye have resorted to using a gas canister to light the memorial while they await the installation of a pipeline, currently slated to be finished in 2017.
State-run television network Rossiya TV last week called the cardboard slab “either a bad joke or a silent rebuke,” and acknowledged that the memorial is intended to honor Soviet soldiers who perished during the Second World War.
“For the time being, they installed a symbolic cardboard flame,” the station reported last week. “They didn’t mean anything bad by it.”
According to Yevgeny Maslov, the director of the regional agency for cultural heritage, local officials believed the cardboard stand-in would be an adequate replacement while a pipeline is installed.
“Tastes differ when it comes to questions of beautifying public spaces, the color of paint,” he said.
Actual flames will come out of the memorial later this week when Russians celebrate the anniversary of the Nazi defeat on May 9, Mr. Maslov added, albeit with the aid of gas canister.
Despite being the world’s second-largest producer of natural gas, nearly one-third of the households in Russia aren’t connected to gas pipelines, BBC reported. Only one-fifth of Russia’s 4,000 or so eternal flames were being lit continuously when Mr. Putin demanded they be supplied with gas in 2014.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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