map Washington street rename


Actually just the portion of the street directly in front of Russian embassy ...

What a petty and self-congratulating provocation. The US will rename the part of Wisconsin Avenue in front of the Russian Embassy in Washington to "Boris Nemtsov Plaza" changing the address of the Russian mission.

The US is not interested in honoring Boris Nemtsov -- if it was, it would at the very least, rename the entire Wisconsin Avenue, and not just the short portion in front of the Russian mission. (The Boris Nemtsov Plaza will literally split the Wisconsin Avenue in two.)

What does the US think it is accomplishing here? It thinks it is embarrassing Moscow in some great way? When he was killed Boris Nemtsov was a nobody, an MP in the regional Yaroslav parliament. Does the US think it is highlighting some particularly nefarious Russian crime or cover up?

All this cringy move does is showcase once again just how desperate the US is to claim a moral high ground against Russia. How desperately it needs Russia to be the tyrannical dystopia where opposition leaders are assassinated by the Kremlin.

Yet if Russia wanted to do the same and highlight actual US atrocities it would have been spoiled for choice. Agent Orange Street? Abu Ghraib Street? Hiroshima Street?

Incidentally an astute commentator explains why Russians will do no such thing -- they value their culture too much:
The point is, the American embassy in Moscow is located on Ulitsa Chaikovskaya (named after the great Russian composer), the US consulate in Yekaterinburg on Gogol Street (named after the great Russian novelist), the consulate in Vladivostok on Pushkin Street (named after the great Russian poet). Perhaps, Russians can rename Furshtatskaya Street where the US consulate in St. Petersburg is located. But then, that is also unlikely, because Russians are proud of their history, culture and tradition and Furshtatskaya Street has many heritage buildings of Tsarist era.
PS: In the 1980s Iran famously renamed the street the British Embassy in Tehran is located on to Bobby Sands Street. This was obviously done to irritate the British but also to honor a brave man that Iranians admired. By contrast Nemtsov doesn't mean anything to anyone in the US.