Moscow trolls UK embassy
British diplomats stationed in Moscow will now come to work at the UK embassy through a square named after the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR). Mayor Sergey Sobyanin’s office confirmed the move on Tuesday.
The UK has been a vocal supporter of Kiev and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned the Ukrainian government against resolving the conflict with Russia with what he termed as a “bad peace.”
LPR militias have been fighting alongside Russian troops since the beginning of the offensive in late February. On Sunday, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced that the last remnants of Ukrainian forces had been driven out of the republic.
Authorities in Moscow previously renamed a square, where the American embassy is located, after the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).
The Mayor’s office had several possible options for a location named after LPR – all of them linked to Western embassies. In an online poll, 57% chose Britain rather than Germany, Lithuania or Belgium.
It was not immediately clear if the British embassy’s address will be changed accordingly. It is currently listed as Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya 10, after the closest embankment.
In March, UK activists called to rename Kensington Palace Gardens in London, where the Russian embassy is located, in honor of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The local council, however, suggested that Ukraine needed non-symbolic gestures from Britain.
A section of Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, DC closest to the Russian embassy in the US was renamed Boris Nemtsov Plaza in 2018. Nemtsov was a Russian opposition politician, who was assassinated in central Moscow in 2015. His killers were found and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, but the person who ordered the hit was never identified.
The US embassy in Moscow has removed its old address from its website, but without indicating the new ‘DPR Square’ address
