Lenin statue damaged by bomb blast

A bomb today blew a large hole in one of Russia’s best-known statues of Vladimir Lenin.

The blast hit the towering statue in the square outside Finland Station in St Petersburg.

The bronze statue, portraying Lenin with his arm raised, commemorates a speech he gave outside the station when he returned to Russia from exile in April 1917, a few months before the Bolshevik Revolution.

A police spokesman said no one was injured in the blast, which took place before dawn, and which had the power of about 400 grams of TNT.