The first element removed was the figure of a woman with a child that stood at the top of the obelisk. An urn with soil collected from battlefields was also taken away.

The Russian embassy in Poland protested to the local authorities. It recalled that more than 2,200 Soviet soldiers died in the fighting for Rzeszów.

In total, during the liberation of the country from the Nazis, Red Army losses amounted to about 600,000 soldiers.