[2][4] On 17 April 2024 the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy removed the official status of the monument and allowed its dismantling.

The whole People's Friendship Arch complex (and its surviving arch) was located on top of the right bank of the Dnieper river overlooking the Park Bridge (a pedestrian bridge that connects the city with Trukhaniv Island) and the Shore Highway (Ukrainian: Набережне шосе, romanized: Naberezhne shose).

[11][12] The Director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance Volodymyr Viatrovych stated in February 2018, that "a sculptural group" of the monument should be removed according to the decommunization laws.

According to the organizers, the action aims to draw attention to the fate of Ukrainian citizens, as well as to urge everyone to make as much effort as possible to free political prisoners in Russia.

[16] After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on 25 April 2022, mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, announced the dismantling of the sculptural part of the monument as having lost its ideological meaning.

[17] The next day, during the dismantling of a bronze sculptural group, the head of a figure symbolizing a Russian fell off.

[8] An expert commission of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINM) concluded on 29 March 2024 that although the monument was renamed it did still "belong to the symbols of Russian imperial policy and is subject to complete dismantling.

"[7] Prior UINM head Anton Drobovych had stated that it would be a good idea to reformat the monument into a rainbow and that such "an artistic solution" would have "clearly separated Ukraine from modern Russia, in which representatives of the LGBTQ+ community are persecuted.