A massive bronze and granite Soviet-era monument from 1954, dedicated to the Red Army's role in liberating Bulgaria in 1944. A red-army soldier stands on a tall plinth, ringed by socialist-realist reliefs of workers and partisans.
The monument has been the focus of years of pop-protest art: locals routinely repaint the reliefs in night raids — once as Marvel superheroes, once as Father Christmas, once in the colours of the Ukrainian flag. Demands to dismantle it have grown since 2022, and parts of the surrounding plaza were fenced off in 2023. The Soviet soldier still stands, for now.