Russians vote on returning secret police chief’s statue

MOSCOW: Three decades after Russians toppled the statue of Soviet secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky, they are voting on whether to restore it outside of the domestic intelligence headquarters in central Moscow.

The week-long vote kicked off on Thursday over a new monument to stand in front of the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor agency to the KGB, on Moscow’s Lubyanka Square, a stone’s throw from the Kremlin.

Muscovites are choosing between Dzerzhinsky, who is seen as a symbol of the KGB’s excesses in the Soviet Union, and Alexander Nevsky, a 13th-century prince and Orthodox saint.