The giant statue in Volgograd is said to be in danger of collapsing at any moment

Moscow - The monumental statue Motherland Calls, towering in Volgograd as a symbol of victory in the Battle of Stalingrad, could collapse at any moment. In an interview with the newspaper Moskovskij Komsomolets, restorer Vadim Cerkovnikov stated this. The concrete statue is full of cracks, and its foundations have been undermined by groundwater.
    The sad condition of the work on Mamaev Kurgan was pointed out by the Minister of Culture. According to a two-hundred-page report, the monument requires immediate repairs, otherwise Russia will lose one of the main symbols of victory in World War II.
    Ironically, just three years ago, the local governor assured the public that the statue was in good condition and that it was not in danger of collapsing.
    "From an engineering perspective, the restoration will be difficult," admitted the restorer who previously oversaw the repair of another gigantic work from the Soviet era, the sculpture of the Worker and Kolkhoz Woman at the Moscow Exhibition Center. However, he considers preserving the "symbol of Volgograd" to be a "personal debt" to the three dozen relatives who fell in the war.
    According to Cerkovnikov, the problem was caused by the low resilience of the concrete to the climate in the Volga region - it is said that a more durable material was originally planned - and mistakes in designing the foundation.
    "How was it possible to build a statue weighing around 8,000 tons on just compacted soil? It actually stands freely and is now leaning due to the movement of the foundation itself, as well as the deformation of the figure," he said, adding that the swaying of the fourteen-ton sword held by Motherland further worsens the situation in gusts of wind. The statue's tilt measures 222 millimeters, while the critical threshold is 277 millimeters. Currently, the further behavior of the work appears to be "unpredictable."
    The statue Motherland, with a total height of 85 meters, including a 33-meter-long sword, was considered the tallest statue in the world upon its unveiling in 1967. Currently, according to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, it ranks 11th. However, it is still regarded as the largest statue of a woman in the world.