An operation to dismantle the largest of the remaining monuments to Vladimir Lenin in Ukraine was over in Zaporizhia on Thursday afternoon.

A crane finally managed to pull down the 20-meter-tall statue from the pedestal and it fell to the ground.

About 200 people came to watch the operation on the city's square.

The demolition of the monument was shown in a live broadcast by many websites.

The operation began on March 14 under the law on de-communization and decisions passed by Zaporizhia City Council.

The Lenin monument in Zaporizhia on Lenin Square was unveiled in 1964. The figure is made of bronze, the pedestal is pink granite. The total height of the monument is 19.8 meters.

Earlier in March Zaporizhia dismantled a Grigol (Sergo) Ordzhonikidze portrait sculpture and a monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky. Ordzhonikidze was a Georgian Bolshevik, later member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Politburo and close associate of Joseph Stalin. Dzerzhinsky was a Soviet statesman of Polish descent, and a member of revolutionary movements, and the chief of the Soviet secret police.

Over 800 monuments to Vladimir Ulyanov, or Lenin, a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist (1870 – 1924), had been toppled by the beginning of 2016. According to rough estimates, about 1,400 monuments to Lenin are still in Ukraine.