You're reading: Moscow authorities swiftly take down Ukrainian flag raised at night over skyscraper

  A Ukrainian flag has been taken down from the spire of one of the so-called Stalin-style skyscrapers on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment in Moscow, which unidentified people had raised there early on Wednesday, a source with city emergency services told Interfax.

“The operation was finished at 10:05 a.m.,” he said.

The Ukrainian flag was flying atop the building for about three hours, the source said.

“The flag was noticed at 7:15 a.m. on Wednesday,” the source said.

An Interfax correspondent had reported earlier that unidentified people had raised a Ukrainian flag on the spire of the Stalin-style skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment early on Wednesday.

A law enforcement source told Interfax that several young men with climbing gear had been brought to the Tagansky district police department on suspicion that they could have been responsible for raising the flag.

“Preliminary findings indicate that the unidentified men walked to the upper floor of the building using the stairs inside it and then fixed the cloth on the skyscraper’s spire using special equipment,” it said.

Another source with city emergency services told Interfax that unidentified people had painted half of the star crowning the skyscraper’s spire blue. “Obviously, the star was intended to be painted in the Ukrainian flag’s colors,” the sources aid.

It was determined preliminarily that all the suspects brought to the Tagansky police department are residents of Moscow and the Moscow region.