Hero City monument, Kyiv

The Hero City monument (officially, the Obelisk in honor of the hero city of Kyiv, Ukrainian: Обеліск на честь міста-героя Києва) is a World War II memorial in Halytska Square in Kyiv, Ukraine.

It is a 30 m-tall (98 ft) obelisk that was erected in 1982, during the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

In its original form it was marked with the dates "1941" and "1945", the starting and ending dates of World War II according to the Soviet Union, and featured a "hero star" reflecting Kyiv's status as a Soviet Hero City.

[1] On 15 September 2023, the Soviet stars were removed from the obelisk, together with the annotation board in the Russian language,[2] and the "1941" marking was changed to "1939" to match the official Ukrainian date for the start of World War II.

[2][3] On 4 November 2023 the communist star on top of the monument was also removed.

The Hero City monument, Kyiv, photographed in 2014