From friendship there was only a stone – Kommersant

In Yaroslavl, a discussion is flaring up around the proposal to break sister city relations with the cities of Western countries (now they are suspended) and remove the memorial sign “Stone of Friendship” from the central square. Mayor Artem Molchanov opposes it, as he considers sister city relations part of history. And a member of the Public Chamber of the Yaroslavl Region, Igor Gavrilov, hopes for the resumption of sister city relations in the future.

Yaroslavl public figure Sergei Kazansky sent a letter to Artem Molchanov with a request to dismantle the memorial sign to twin cities in one of the central squares. The sign was installed in 1992 and is known as the Stone of Friendship. Mr. Kazansky believes that the twin cities of the Western countries “actually turned out to be enemies of the Russian Federation,” since their countries supply weapons to Ukraine, from which Yaroslavl residents die, too: “What kind of friendship can we talk about? Ask any Yaroslavl citizen if they want to see these “brothers” on the streets of Yaroslavl?

The mayor’s office had previously suspended twinning and partnership agreements with all cities in Europe and the United States. The social activist believes that this format indicates the desire of officials to renew ties in the future. “City officials and deputies hope that everything will return and, as before, they will travel abroad at the expense of the budget. This is called “people’s diplomacy”. Nothing will come back!” – writes a public figure.

Sergey Kazansky says that friendship with the cities of Europe and the USA should be forgotten for at least 50 years. He proposes to remove the Stone of Friendship in the courtyard of the City Hall.

The first of the sister cities of Yaroslavl was the city of Jyväskylä (Finland) in 1966. Since 1970, similar relations have been developing with French Poitiers. In 1984, an agreement on friendship and cooperation between Yaroslavl and the city of Coimbra (Portugal) was signed, and since 1988, Kassel (Germany) and Burlington (USA) have become sister cities of Yaroslavl, and since 1989 – Exeter (UK). In 1994, the German city of Hanau became Yaroslavl’s twin. In 2013 – San Ramon and Liberia (Costa Rica). And in 2016, the Bulgarian Burgas joined them. The opening of the memorial sign to the sister cities in Yaroslavl took place in 1992 in the presence of the mayors of the sister cities. In 2022, sister city ties were suspended.

Artem Molchanov told Kommersant that he did not plan to comply with the request. “Despite the fact that at present partnership agreements with a number of European countries have been suspended on their initiative, our relations are a history that cannot be changed,” the mayor said. with our city and country, they pretend that there were no sister city relations between us. Unlike them, we respect our history and culture.”

The mayor is referring to the plans of the authorities of Finnish Jyväskylä to rename Yaroslavl Square in connection with the deterioration of political relations. The square got its name in honor of twinning relations between the two cities.

The artistic director of the Yaroslavl Jazz Center and the chairman of the commission on cultural issues of the regional Public Chamber, Igor Gavrilov, also disagrees with the proposal to dismantle the Friendship Stone. “It was not the city halls who were friends, the townspeople were friends,” he remarked. “Friendship at the level of government has long been suspended. Both us and them. But friendly relations remained between people. I also do not exclude myself from this process. People sit in zoom and say – they don’t condemn anyone, they talk about human things. My opinion: you can not cut the relationship between people.

“A good word is ‘suspended’,” Mr. Gavrilov comments on sister city relations. “I think we will return to this in some form.”

Now Yaroslavl is developing ties with the cities of Asia. Recently, deputies of the municipality approved the signing of partnership agreements with Jiujiang (PRC) and Osh (Kyrgyzstan). However, Sergei Kazansky does not intend to stop the fight against the international relations of the city administration, which he “has been waging for five years.”

Anton Golitsyn, Yaroslavl