Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky said that the AK-47 rifle has become “Russia’s cultural brand”.

A towering monument to Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the prolific assault rifle that bears his name, has been unveiled in Moscow.

Kalashnikov died in 2013 at age 94 in the city of Izhevsk where he lived. He has received accolades as the creator of the AK-47 assault rifle, the world’s most popular firearm. An estimated 100 million guns are spread worldwide.

Mikhail Kalashnikov holds a prototype of his famous AK-47 assault rifle, during a ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of its creation in the Russia's Armed Forces Central Museum in Moscow on July 6, 2007. | Photo Credit: AP

Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky said at the monument’s opening on September 19 that the Kalashnikov rifle has become “Russia’s cultural brand”. The monument in downtown Moscow shows Kalashnikov cradling his rifle.

Police officers detain a man as he holds a placard reading, “A weapon designer is equal to a designer of death”, during the opening ceremony of a monument to Mikhail Kalashnikov, the Russian designer of the AK-47 assault rifle, in Moscow on September 19, 2017. | Photo Credit: REUTERS

Kalashnikov, born into a peasant family in Siberia, began brooding about a new rifle design after being wounded in a 1941 battle against Nazi forces, and finalized it in 1947.