The 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine triggered geo-political schisms that have changed the world as we know it. The ideology behind the invasion and the rhetoric behind global responses have revealed the interconnected nature of modern politics, which for better or for worse, are deeply entangled in historical narratives, social identities, and emotional geographies. This paper offers a case study of this entanglement by looking at how these different meanings converge at one specific point: Kyiv's Motherland Monument. While many scholars have recognized the importance of evaluating how public monuments play a role in collective place-making (see Knochel and Jordan 2021, Ehrenfeucht 2020), and the significance of decolonizing monuments (see Prescott and Lahti 2022, Lonetree 2021, Carruthers 2019), these issues have received little attention in the context of the unfolding geo-political situation in Ukraine. Overlooking the banks of the Dnipro river, Kyiv's Motherland Monument is a contested site of emotional, cultural, and historical identity-making. Viewed by some Ukrainians as a remnant of Soviet oppression and by others as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, a reconsideration of the monument in the aftermath of the 2022 Invasion is both timely and necessary. Drawing from literature on emotional geography, cultural identity, and historical narratives of place-making, as well as interviews with Ukrainian scholars and citizens, this paper aims to offer an interdisciplinary exploration of the Motherland Monument in a complex temporal-geographical context.