Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will attend on Tuesday in Moscow the unveiling ceremony of a World War II memorial to replace a monument blown up in the Georgian city of Kutaisi last year.
The ceremony will be also attended by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, former Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli, former Georgian Parliament speaker Nino Burdzhanadze and Russian and Georgian WWII veterans.
The 46-meter Soviet-era memorial in Kutaisi, Georgia's second-largest city, was demolished last year on December 19 to make space for a new parliamentary building.
Russia denounced the demolition as an "act of vandalism" and accused Georgian authorities of a "symbolic attack" on the memory of Georgians who died in the war.
The new monument, to go up in Moscow's Poklonnaya Gora memorial park, will feature two Soviet soldiers, Georgian Meliton Kantaria and Russian Mikhail Yegorov, who hoisted a Soviet flag over the Reichstag during the Battle of Berlin in May 1945.
The two bronze statues, with the flag in their arms, will stand in front of a smaller replica of the Kutaisi monument.
Russia initially wanted to build a replica of the monument, but Merab Berdzenishvili, who designed the original in 1981, said the blueprints and miniatures have been lost.
MOSCOW, December 21 (RIA Novosti)
