Moscow might rename the street that houses the US embassy to ‘North American Dead End’
A nationalist party lawmaker has suggested renaming the street after officials in Columbia agreed to do the same in January
It’s not exactly the next cold war. But things are heating up between the United States and Russia over something very silly: the name of the streets that house each other’s embassies.
Back in January, District of Columbia city officials voted unanimously to rename the street on which the Russian embassy sits. On January 10, the street was re-dubbed Boris Nemtsov, after a slain Russian democracy activist. Nemtsov was a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In February 2015, he was shot dead while walking home from a Moscow restaurant. Five Chechen men were convicted of the killing in 2017, but Nemtsov’s family believes his real killer remains at large, and that he was assassinated for his political work.
At the time, Russian politicians called Washington’s name change a dirty trick. ��
Now, one wants to strike back. Hard.
A lawmaker with Russia’s nationalist LDPR party has suggested renaming the street where the US houses its Moscow embassy North American Dead End. The full address would read: North American Dead End, 1.
The embassy is currently housed on Bolshoy Devyatinsky Lane, 8.
Politician Mikhail Degtyaryov pitched the plan to Moscow’s city hall recently, and the government says it will consider the option.
It’s just the recent parry in a fight waged around the world.
Coincidentally, Ankara city officials on Monday began debating whether to rename the street on which the US embassy stands to�Olive Branch. It may sound nice, but it’s actually something of a troll – Olive Branch is the name of an ongoing Turkish military operation in Syria against the Syrian Kurdish militia. That effort was in response to a US plan, which was later scrapped, to create a border security unit on the Turkey-Syria border made up mostly of Kurdish fighters.
Recently, Turkey renamed the street of the United Arab Emirates embassy after Ottoman commander Fahreddin Pasha, a defender of Medina during first world war.
