Kachanava's Youth Brings Russian Architect to Minsk, Who Designs Ideological Monuments for Occupied Cities of Ukraine
"In Crimea, we promptly solved the problem with Ukrainian language inscriptions," Alexey Komov said.
The Belarusian Union of Architects invites specialists and students to a master class by Moscow urban planner Alexey Komov, who has become a consultant for the project on the development of historical towns in Belarus.
The Belarusian Union of Architects announced on its social networks a lecture scheduled for November 13, 2026, titled "Lighthouses of the Russian World: a Sovereign Response to Modern Challenges".
The event will take place in the conference hall of the Republican House of Architects. Admission to the meeting is free, and specialists and students are invited to discuss how urban planning "becomes a form of civilizational resistance and a pillar of Russian sovereignty".
Consultant for Halshany under the "Union State" line
In addition to the professional union of architects, the co-organizers of the meeting include the "Team of the Future" leadership platform, created under the Youth Council at the Council of the Republic under the patronage of Natalya Kachanava, and its subsidiary project — the cultural and social cluster "Vstrecha / Sustrecha". The latter initiative is led by film and television director Alexandra Krot, a participant in the eleventh intake of the "Team of the Future".
The "Vstrecha / Sustrecha" cluster is positioned as a network of open cultural, leisure, and public spaces in small towns of Belarus, and historical buildings in the agro-town of Halshany, Ashmiany district, have been chosen as the first site for its implementation.
The visit of the Moscow guest will not be limited to one lecture. The authors of the initiative introduced Alexey Komov as their official "architecture consultant for the project". According to the organizers, the urban planner is visiting Belarus for the first time, and "productive cooperation along the lines of the Union State projects" awaits them, as the Russian specialist "possesses enormous experience in preserving the unique historical and aesthetic atmosphere in cities frequently visited by tourists".
The building of the former hospital in Halshany, which the "Vstrecha / Sustrecha" cluster wants to restore.
However, it remains unclear how the specific experience of the "Russian world" propagandist can help in the development of a town whose European identity and tourist fame are based on the ruins of the Sapieha Renaissance castle and the Baroque complex of the Franciscan church and monastery.
"Like the Russian tricolor in the taiga or on Mars"
In his homeland, 51-year-old Alexey Komov, son of the famous Soviet sculptor Oleg Komov, is primarily known as an ideologist of monumental propaganda.
He is a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Arts, director of the International Institute of Architecture and Design at Griboyedov University, vice-president of the Union of Architects of Russia, and a member of the Council for the Formation of a New Russian Style, created with the support of Vladimir Putin and headed by his advisor Elena Yampolskaya. In October 2026, Komov presented his report at the international forum "Values of the Future World. Russia", where neighboring sections were headed by philosopher Alexander Dugin and chairman of the Izborsky Club Alexander Prokhanov.
The "Lighthouses of the Russian World" project, to which the Minsk master class is dedicated, was launched by Komov in 2023 together with the general director of the SMI2 news aggregator Yuri Belousov and advisor to the head of annexed Crimea Oleg Kryuchkov.
The "Lighthouses of the Russian World" initiative has no relation to marine or river navigation. It is about creating a network of monumental objects, steles, and obelisks, which the curators call "cultural transponders" for the visual marking of captured Ukrainian territories.
As Komov himself explained in an interview with "Kulturomania" portal, the project's goal is to consolidate the empire's presence in cities where, over the post-Soviet years, "the unified Russian cultural space was violently torn apart".
According to him, the monuments should serve as modern "Catherine's milestones" on the path of advancing Russian troops: "Like the Russian tricolor in the taiga, at the pole, on Mars, they will say: 'We are here, this is us, this is ours'."
In an conversation with "Zavtra" newspaper, the architect directly linked the installation of such objects and work with the urban environment to the elimination of the Ukrainian language in public space:
"When we reunited with Crimea, we quite promptly solved problems, for example, with inscriptions in Ukrainian in various settlements. Now this needs to be done in the new territories.
We talk a lot about big projects: future "cosmodromes", stadiums, embankments - but a person, their consciousness, is formed daily by the surrounding environment, including at eye level. The empire must shine, illuminate everything with its presence, down to the smallest detail."
The first such objects and their scaled-down copies have already been installed in Simferopol and in front of the youth center in occupied Berdyansk, Zaporizhzhia region. For Donetsk, a lighthouse in the form of a mining headframe with battlements has been developed; for Luhansk, a stele in the form of a blast furnace with flames; for Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, structures symbolizing the Kakhovka HPP and Zaporizhzhia NPP. Also in the project catalog, monuments for Mariupol, Alchevsk, Svatove, and Kupyansk are presented.
The authors' ambitions extend far beyond the front line. The project's exhibition includes architectural "lighthouses" for Cuba, Sakhalin, as well as for Ukrainian cities that are under the control of the Ukrainian government.
In particular, Russian architects have prepared two monument projects for Kulikove Pole in Odesa, opposite the trade union building, which Russian attackers tried to seize in 2014.
In addition, project co-founders Yuri Belousov and Oleg Kryuchkov stated that the final "Lighthouse of the Russian World" should appear in the center of Kyiv - on Maidan Nezalezhnosti, which is planned to be renamed "Russian Square" and built up with an alley of Russian tsars.
According to Kryuchkov, concepts for new master plans for Kyiv, Odesa, and Lviv, developed by invited Russian architects, are already 80% complete.
From the "Crimean Architectural Front" to the "Great Russian Style"
Komov began acquiring his own experience working with historical cities, which so interested the authors of the Halshany project, in 2014. After graduating from the Moscow Architectural Institute in 1999, he spent more than ten years on private interiors in Moscow, but after the annexation of Crimea, according to his own expression, he went to the "Crimean architectural front" and became the first Russian chief architect of Yevpatoria. Later in Sevastopol, he founded the City Development Institute at the local university, and from 2019 to 2024, he served as the chief architect of Kaluga with the rank of deputy head of the city.
Currently, Komov, together with writer Alexander Prokhanov and his "Russian Dream" movement, co-chairs the jury of the all-Russian review-competition "Great Russian Style". The main triumpher of this competition in 2026 was "Sretensky Workshops" under the leadership of Dmitry Smirnov - the author of the Main Temple of the Russian Armed Forces in the Moscow region's "Patriot" park and the "New Chersonesos" complex in Sevastopol.
At another ideological event - "Forum of the Future 2050" in Moscow - Komov demonstrated his own graphic series "Planet Russia", where the central image was the "Russian Archangel" drone flying towards a portal to tomorrow, framed by a triumphal arch with the Latin inscription Mundo Russico.
In his public speeches, the architect insists that urban planning is a political tool that "turns a population into a people", and that creators themselves, in current conditions, must become "warrior-artists" and "soldiers of the cultural front".
Komov accuses those representatives of the professional community who continue to orient themselves towards Western models of working for the enemy:
"Anyone who today, amidst a bloody war for the very right to be Russian, silences or denies the Russian origin in our culture - is a traitor to their Motherland."
USAID Conspiracy, Drones, and Nostalgia for Beria
A special place in the theoretical expositions of the new consultant for Belarusian projects is occupied by criticism of modern urban planning legislation and private land ownership. Komov claims that the current Urban Planning Code and construction norms were imposed on Russia in the 1990s with money from the American agency USAID and George Soros's foundations with the aim of physical and mental destruction of the country.
According to him, it was precisely through this "diversion" of liberal urbanists that the population concentrated in several large agglomerations, and cities began to be built up with glass high-rises, including around train stations and restricted facilities.
As a result, during military operations, such buildings "shatter into fragments from drone strikes and are themselves capable of killing people", whereas in Soviet times, residential areas were designed taking into account civil defense requirements and preparation for war.
To rectify the situation and "shed the shackles of predatory liberal prejudices," the architect proposes eliminating the current system where construction, master plans, and heritage protection are divided among different departments, and public buildings are designed through a system of state procurements and tenders. Instead, he calls for the creation of a unified Ministry of Architecture directly subordinated to the president, where architects themselves would become the authority.
As a historical standard for effective industry management, Alexey Komov cites the Stalinist period after World War II:
"It is no coincidence that in the Soviet post-war period, chief architects of cities were effectively subordinate to Beria. That is why destroyed cities were restored so quickly. Because, in essence, the chief architect is responsible for the safety of the city - both physical, because it is related to defense and strategic objects, and aesthetic."
Citing the pre-war architect of Crimea, Boris Belozersky, he formulates the conditions under which the creation of a full-fledged urban ensemble is possible:
"The architecture of a city can only develop in the absence of private property or in connection with some catastrophes - wars, tsunamis, and other misfortunes. This is both a tragedy and, at the same time, a chance for development, for restarting urban projects."
What specific architectural solutions and "cultural codes" the ideologue of "Lighthouses of the Russian World" proposes for the former Sapieha residence in Halshany and other small towns of Belarus, within the framework of funding under the "Union State" line, is not yet reported.
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