Chernobyl home to 2 of last Lenin statues in Ukraine

Thousands have been removed across Ukraine in recent years, but two of the country's last statues of Vladimir Lenin remain standing inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Until 2014, when a new pro-Western president came to power, there were 5,500 monuments to the Soviet Union founder in Ukrainian territory.

Ukraine's Parliament passed laws aimed at the decommunization of the country in May 2015 that give legal grounds for the demolition of monuments.

The statues inside Chernobyl have only survived due to the Exclusion Zone's status without a local authority to make the relevant decisions.

"It does not have a local authority or self-governing body. This is not a city in the administrative meaning of it," said Oleksandr Syrota, Chairman of the Public Council at the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management.

It is also closed to visitors, making it impossible for activists to destroy the reminders of its Soviet past, even 35 years on from the disaster at the nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986.