KYIV -- The Ukrainian parliament has voted to change the name of the country's third-largest city from Dnipropetrovsk to Dnipro.

Lawmakers voted 247-97 on May 19 for renaming the eastern city of more than 1 million residents as part of a decommunization campaign.

The city was originally known as Katerynoslav. It was named as Dnipropetrovsk in 1926 after the Dnieper River and Ukraine's Soviet Communist Party leader Hryhoriy Petrovskiy.

Under legislation adopted in May 2015, the communist government that ruled between 1917 and 1991 is condemned as a criminal regime.

Its symbols and propaganda are banned -- a measure that requires the removal of all communist monuments not related to World War II and renaming public places and landmarks bearing Soviet names.

The legislation applies the same treatment to the Nazi German regime, which occupied and controlled much of Ukraine during World War II.