There is now a Vladimir inside the Kremlin and one standing just outside.

On Friday, the Kremlin’s current incumbent, Vladimir Putin, unveiled a monument a stone’s throw from its gates to Prince Vladimir the Great, calling on Russians to unite to face external threats as his namesake did a millennium ago.

The 17-metre monument(56ft) monument to Vladimir, the 10th-century ruler of Kievan Rus who adopted Orthodox Christianity for his people, has caused controversy owing to both its size and the political implications of claiming for Russia a figure whom both Russia and Ukraine believe to be the founder of their states.

Vladimir is believed to have had several wives and hundreds of concubines, but is best known for his adoption of Orthodox Christianity in 988.



“He laid the moral foundation on which our lives are still based today. It was a strong moral bearing, solidarity and unity which helped our ancestors overcome difficulties and win victories for the glory of the fatherland, making it stronger and greater with each generation,” Putin said at the unveiling.

“Today it is our duty to stand together against contemporary challenges and threats, using our spiritual legacy and our invaluable traditions of unity to go forward and continue our thousand-year history.”

Vladimir Putin speaks at the unveiling ceremony, watched by the Moscow mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, and Natalya Solzhenitsyna, widow of Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Photograph: Mikhail Metzel/TASS

The president was joined by the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and Russian religious leaders at the ceremony. Initially, the monument was meant to overlook Moscow from a hilltop in the south-west of the city, but after protests that it would ruin the cityscape, its location was moved to just outside the Kremlin walls and its height was reduced.

The state Vladimir ruled over, Kievan Rus, later disintegrated, and both modern-day Ukraine and Russia consider him the founder of their states.



In speeches at the ceremony, neither Putin nor the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church used the word “Kiev”, although the patriarch alluded to the discord between Russia and Ukraine by saying Vladimir’s descendants currently lived in many countries, and “it’s bad if the children forget that they have the same father”.

Russian state television repeatedly announced the Moscow statue as “the first monument to Vladimir the Great”, ignoring the fact that one already stands in Kiev.

Ukraine gave an acerbic response on the country’s official Twitter account, posting a photograph of the Kiev monument and using the Ukrainian spelling of Prince Vladimir.

Don’t forget what real Prince Volodymyr monument looks like. Kyiv brought Orthodox Christianity to the Rus. Kind reminder to @Russia pic.twitter.com/zQ0BpUKMbS — Ukraine / Україна (@Ukraine) November 4, 2016

Friday is the Day of National Unity in Russia, a post-Soviet holiday that has failed to capture public imagination but is strongly promoted by authorities. State television broadcast footage of a concert in central Moscow, while the anchor told viewers that Russia was historically only strong when it was united.



The Vladimir statue is the latest in a flurry of recent memorialisations in Russia. Last month a monument to the 16th-century tsar Ivan the Terrible was unveiled in the town of Oryol, prompting a nationwide debate over the role of the monarch, who killed his own son and set up a ruthless personal guard to terrorise his internal enemies, but also expanded Russia’s borders.