Donetsk, Apr 18 – DAN. The DPR contest of Pushkin's Poetry Readers is now open for applications, the director of the Republican Popular Art House Maxim Romanovskiy said.

"The contest pursues the popularization of the Russian language and culture, and the art of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin in the DPR to spark creativity of people of all ages, to discover talents and encourage interest in the Russian history and literature," he said.

The contest comprises two categories - Readers and Authors. The first group is expected to recite Pushkin's poetry, the second one is to present their own pieces about characters of the poet's legacy.

All the DPR residents, including from the recently liberated territories, are welcome to apply from April 18 till May 18.

The donors of the competition added that Ukraine, where the majority of population use Russian as both home and public language, takes a different approach to the Russian ancestry as they destroy monuments of prominent Russian writers, musicians and scientists, and rename street bearing their names, and even went as far as to ban the celebration of the Victory Day that commemorates the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. Instead, Ukrainian authorities endorsed a new public holiday on the day a WWII-time Nazi collaborator and terrorist, Stepan Bandera, was born. *ot