<p>Prague 6 has started to cover the statue of Soviet Marshal Konev</p>

Prague - The Prague 6 town hall has decided to cover the statue of Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev. They are erecting scaffolding on site and will cover the statue with a tarpaulin. They justified this by the need to protect the memorial from vandals. The spokesperson for Prague 6, Ondřej Šrámek, said this today. The monument is the subject of a dispute with the Russian Federation, and the sixth district proposes that it be moved to the garden of the Russian embassy in Prague.

"We are building scaffolding to protect the statue from further vandal attacks. This is currently the most effective solution. We are not priori against having the statue here, but we are unable to protect it effectively," Šrámek said.

The statue has been damaged several times in the past, and it was last splashed with red paint last week. The Russian embassy strongly condemned the painting of the monument, calling it a barbaric act and an insult to the memory of the Red Army soldiers. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs subsequently summoned the chargé d'affaires of the Czech embassy in Moscow and expressed a strong protest against the desecration of the monument. The Czech diplomacy stated that it cannot interfere in the matter of self-government.

According to the spokesperson for Prague 6, the statue will be covered until a decision is made about its future. The fate of the statue will be discussed by the representatives of Prague 6 on September 12. "But this is not a so-called deadline by which clarity will be achieved. We have already been approached by two interested parties who would like to have it in their museums. We will see how the discussions develop," said Šrámek. Mayor Ondřej Kolář (TOP 09) has recently offered the statue to the Russian embassy to place it in its garden.

Last year, on the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Prague 6 unveiled a plaque at the statue with accompanying text. The text describes Konev's role in 1945, when he liberated Czechoslovakia from the Nazis, in 1956, when he supervised the suppression of the Hungarian uprising, in 1961, when as the commander of a group of Soviet troops he participated in resolving the Berlin crisis by building the Berlin Wall, and in 1968, when he allegedly oversaw intelligence reconnaissance prior to the invasion of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia.

This year, the city council then decided not to return the memorial plaque to the Old Town Hall recognizing Konev's liberation of Prague. This also drew criticism from the Russian side.