The Moscow city authorities have decided to change the name of Europe Square, a major city center plaza located near the Kievsky railway station and beside a large shopping mall of the same name. The area located between the railway terminal and the Moscow River is now to be known as Eurasia Square, according to a city government decree published on Wednesday.
The document, signed by Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, does not provide an official explanation for the name change. It annuls all previous decisions by the city authorities related to the old name. City officials have not commented on the development.
Created in 2002, the square was initially a part of a joint Russian-Belgian project aimed at symbolizing the unity of the continent, according to Russian media. The square has a fountain at its center decorated with the ‘Abduction of Europa’, an abstract sculpture by Belgian artist Olivier Strebelle.
The square famously boasted 48 flagpoles bearing the colors of every European nation state, but they were removed in 2023 amid the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The city authorities did not officially comment on their removal at the time.
It also features a commemoration stone marking 300 years since the ‘Unification of Ukraine and Russia’. This refers to the moment when Cossacks living on the territory of modern Ukraine broke away from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century following the Bogdan Khmelnitsky uprising and asked the Tsardom of Russia to take them in.
The territory they controlled effectively amounted to present-day Kiev, Chernigov, and Zhitomir regions – three areas in the north of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in 2022.
This is not the first time that places named after Europe in Russia have received new names in recent years. In 2022, Council of Europe Square in Saratov was renamed Heroes of Donbass Square. Later the same year, the city of Perm changed the name of its Europe Square to Three Centuries Square.