The restoration of a statue of Vladimir Lenin that was hit by an explosion in a St. Petersburg suburb earlier this week will cost some 4 million rubles ($130,000), the head of the local sculpture museum said on Tuesday.
Police are still searching for the person or people who blew up the monument to the "father of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution" in the town of Pushkin, 24 kilometers (about 15 miles) south of St. Petersburg at around 10 pm Moscow time (19.00 GMT).
The explosive device was equivalent to no more than 100 grams of TNT. The blast broke several windows in a neighboring building, but nobody was injured.
"It is difficult to name the sum of the damage at the moment. It may approximately stand at 4 million rubles," said Vladimir Timofeyev, the director of the Pushkin sculpture museum.
He said the statue was seriously damaged, adding that a special commission will make a decision on its future.
This is not the first time a monument to Lenin has been targeted.
On April 1, 2009, an explosion blew a hole in the rear of a Lenin statue at the St. Petersburg's Finlyandsky railway station. The Communist Party of Russia described the blast as "a politically charged act of vandalism."
ST. PETERSBURG, December 7 (RIA Novosti)
