Bulgaria to Build Monument to Russian General

Lyubomir Kolarov, head of the Bulgarian Heroes Fund, has announced that a monument to a 19th-century Russian general will be built in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia.

Joseph Gurko, 1828-1901, a Russian Field Marshal, took a prominent role in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878.

It is known in Bulgaria as the Liberation War because, as a result of it, the Russian Tsar forced the Ottoman Sultan to create a free Bulgarian state after more than 400 years of Ottoman rule.

General Gurko's monument will be unveiled on March 2, a day before March 3, Bulgaria's Liberation Day.

Kolarov has expressed hopes that the monument will boost the historically friendly ties between Russians and Bulgarians.

More than a hundred monuments built between 1945 and 1989, during the years of Soviet domination, still remain standing in the country.