Lenin statues toppled in government-held eastern Ukraine

Masked men have toppled several statues of the Soviet leader Lenin in eastern Ukraine, in a fresh show of anti-Russian sentiment as Kiev battles pro-Moscow separatists.

Two statues were demolished at universities in the government-controlled city of Kharkiv late on Friday, shown in videos posted on YouTube, a week after Kiev's parliament approved a law banning Soviet symbols in Ukraine.

In the video, a group of men hook a noose around the neck of the first statue and tug it to the ground where it shatters.

Then they cut the lock on the gate to a second location and use a van to tug another statue down.

The bill, which also bans Nazi symbols, has yet to be signed into law by President Petro Poroshenko, but numerous Ukrainians have already begun destroying Communist-era monuments.

On Friday the pro-Kiev governor's office in Lugansk, an eastern region partly split between the government and separatists, said another Lenin statue had been daubed in yellow and blue, Ukraine's national colours, and later toppled in the village of Stanytsya Luganska.