The Russian Military-Historical Society has backed the installation of the Kalashnikov monument, which is estimated to cost 35 million rubles ($538,000).
“The weapons that Kalashnikov made were weapons designed to fight evil,” he said. “That was his goal.”
Shcherbakov has a habit of winning state contracts. His monuments, which include Patriarch Hermogenes, Emperor Alexander III, Prince Vladimir, stand near the Kremlin walls and President Vladimir Putin attended the unveiling ceremony of each statue.
In a letter to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church before his death in 2013, Kalashnikov wrote that he was haunted by the thousands of deaths his invention was responsible for.
“My spiritual pain is unbearable,” he wrote. “I keep asking the same insoluble question. If my rifle deprived people of life then can it be that I … a Christian and an Orthodox believer, was to blame for their deaths?”