Motherland Monument

Walk into the park past Pechersk Lavra and the Park of Eternal Glory and you'll see her long before you reach her. The Motherland Monument stands over the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, and at 102 metres from the ground, with the stainless steel figure itself 62 metres tall on top of the museum's main building, she's visible from a long way across the city. The statue weighs 560 tons, and the sword and shield she's holding can be picked out from the far bank of the river.

Look at the shield. It carried the State Emblem of the Soviet Union for 42 years, until workmen on cables cut it away in August 2023 and put the Ukrainian trident there instead, finishing the job in time for Independence Day. Around 85% of Ukrainians backed the swap. The museum renamed her the Ukraine Mother Monument at the same time, though nobody has stopped calling her the Motherland.

Climbing to the Top

There are two viewing platforms. The lower one, on the pedestal at 36.6 metres, costs 150 UAH for an adult and asks nothing of you. The one people come for is on the shield, 91 metres up, and costs 1,000 UAH.

To reach the shield you need to be 18 or over and in good physical shape, in sports shoes. You go up by lift and then metal ladders inside her, squeezing through a 55cm opening on the way, and you can't do it alone: an instructor from the museum comes with you and fits you with a safety harness, and no more than two of you go up at a time. Allow up to 40 minutes. The views from up there are worth the climb, and it's the main reason to come here rather than just look at her from below.

Tickets are sold only at the museum's ticket office, and there are few of them, so expect to queue. Climbs stop during an air raid alert and start again after the all-clear. Be honest with yourself about the ladders before you pay. This is a climb, not a lift.

The Statue's History

The original design came from the Soviet sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich, who modelled the statue on work by the Ukrainian painter Nina Danylenko. Vuchetich had already produced two of the best known Soviet military statues when he came up to the Lavra hills with a party of Communist Party officials in the 1970s looking for a site for a war memorial. He died in 1974 before it was finished, and the story goes that the eyebrows were the only part of his original design to survive. Halyna Kalchenko took the work on, and it finally passed to the sculptor Vasyl Borodai, who gave the statue the shape it has today.

There's an 18 metre section below ground that you'll never see, holding the whole thing up. Museum staff will tell you it would ride out an earthquake measuring 9 on the Richter scale.