Zakharova told how the old spire of the Foreign Ministry was stolen for souvenirs

At a meeting with architecture students from Donbass, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, told where the historical iron spire, removed from the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2017 before being replaced with a new one, had gone. It turned out that the old structure was divided into small pieces and handed over to honored guests as a memorable gift.

“We took the metal and asked to be sawn into pieces. We made a souvenir that has no analogues – we mounted fragments of the authentic spire of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in plexiglass. And for many years we have been handing such a thing to honored guests. As my grandmother said, “the remains are sweet,” Zakharova told the guests.

She also told the architects one of the versions of the story of the appearance of the iron spire on the Foreign Ministry’s “Stalinist” skyscraper, as well as the continuation of this story in the post-Stalin era. In accordance with this option, the architects proposed to remove the architectural excess from metal, but the then leader of the country, Nikita Khrushchev, opposed such a correction of history, saying: “They are already used to it all over the world … It will be some kind of strange signal if the Foreign Ministry is suddenly beheaded.”

During the reconstruction of the building in 2017-2018, the old spire was replaced with an architecturally similar new one, made of corrosion-resistant materials.