The Kyiv Municipal Council Renames Heroiv Sevastopolya Street to Akademika Shalimova Street
The Kyiv Municipal Council has officially renamed Heroiv Sevastopolya Street, located in the Solomianskyi district of the city of Kyiv, to Akademika Shalimova Street. This decision was made at today’s plenary session of the council, with 64 out of 66 deputies present in the hall voting in favor.
The renaming was carried out with the aim of decolonizing the toponymy in the city of Kyiv and honoring the memory of prominent figures of Ukraine.
In the decision document, it is noted that the name «Akademika Shalimova Street» was proposed in honor of the Ukrainian surgeon, one of the founders of the Ukrainian surgical school, Oleksandr Oleksiiovych Shalimov (1918 — 2006). Shalimov performed around 40 thousand surgeries, was a member of the International Society of Surgeons, the Association of Surgeons of Austria, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, a full member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine and the New York Academy of Sciences.
In parallel with the renaming of this street, the process of renaming other streets and objects in Kyiv is ongoing with the aim of de-Russifying the city’s toponymy. For example, on February 8, the Vozdukhoflotskyi Avenue in the Ukrainian capital was renamed to the Air Forces of Ukraine Avenue, and several other urban objects were also renamed.
In November 2023, Pavel Ostrovsky, a member of the naming commission at the Kyiv city mayor’s office, announced that more than 300 renamings had been carried out in Kyiv since 2022. He noted that after the Russian aggression, the demand for de-Russification significantly increased. Prior to this, there was a process of «decommunization» in the naming of objects in the country and the city.
