ULAN BATOR (AFP) - Mongolia’s capital has removed its last statue of Lenin, one of the final vestiges of the country’s longtime alliance with the Soviet Union as it forges ever-closer links to the West and China. Ulan Bator’s Mayor Bat-Uul Erdene branded the late Communist leader Vladimir Lenin a “murderer” after the statue was hoisted onto a lorry on Sunday as a small crowd of bystanders threw old shoes at it. Mongolia was effectively a Soviet satellite state during the Cold War until it abandoned Communism without a shot being fired in 1990.