Moscow considers Dead End address for US embassy as rival powers revive Cold War name games
Russia and America have resurrected one of their favourite Cold War games, renaming streets to inflict maximum embarrassment and tweak each other’s dignity.
Moscow's city government has said it will look into changing the US embassy's address to 1 North American Dead-end.
The proposal appears to be a tit for tat measure after Washington’s city council last month changed the name of the block housing the Russian embassy to 1 Boris Nemtsov Plaza, after the opposition politician who was shot dead near the Kremlin in 2015.
The change went down well in some quarters of the US capital amid allegations that the Kremlin meddled in the US election but provoked anger in Moscow.
Mr Putin’s spokesman complained that the renaming came at a time when relations “between the two countries still leave much to be desired, mildly speaking.”
Mikhail Degtyaryov, a right-wing Russian member of parliament, said in a statement last week that Moscow should call the unnamed alley next to the US embassy "North American Dead-end in honour of the intrusive foreign policy of the United States" and assign the corresponding new address to the diplomatic outpost.
He said a city naming commission had agreed to take up his suggestion later this month.
At a glance | Russian influence on the US Presidential election
Turkey is making its displeasure with America's support for the Kurds known in a similar fashion.
The mayor of Ankara wants to rename the US embassy's street after the Turkish military offensive into northern Syria, which has driven a wedge between the two countries. Nevzat Tandogan Street would become Olive Branch Street under the plan after Operation Olive Branch. Turkey has been a world leader in renaming streets as way of making diplomatic jabs. Last month, during a row with the UAE it rechristened a street near the Gulf country's embassy.
It named it after an Ottoman general who defended the holy city of Medina during the First World War, who the UAE's foreign minister had criticised on Twitter.
Names were a frequent tool of passive aggressive diplomacy during the Cold War.
In the 1980s, Congress renamed the street in front of the Russian ambassador’s residence in honour of Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet dissident.
More recently, Congress proposed renaming the street that houses the Chinese Embassy to remember Liu Xiaobo, the government critic and Nobel laureate who died last year. Russia's most recenet moves comes after months of diplomatic hostilities between Washington and Moscow.
Last year Russia demanded that staffing at US diplomatic facilities be reduced from about 1200 to fewer than 500, while the US demanded the closure of Moscow’s consulate in San Francisco and two recreation facilities.
The US embassy’s current postal address in Moscow is 8 Bolshaya Devyatinsky Lane.
