[MoscowTimes] Authorities in Moscow said on Wednesday that they have changed the official address of the U.S. Embassy building in the Russian capital to one named after pro-Kremlin separatists in Ukraine.
"The United States Embassy in Russia has a new official address," Moscow City hall said in a statement, saying it had named a previously unnamed open area in front of the embassy's main entrance.
It said the embassy is now located at 1 Donetsk People's Republic Square, referring to a breakaway region in eastern Ukraine that Moscow recognized as independent shortly before sending troops there.
The embassy's previous address was 8 Bolshoi Devyatinsky Lane.
The statement added that the change was made after Moscow councilors proposed honoring the "defenders of Donbas" — a majority Russian-speaking region in Ukraine that Russia says it is liberating as part of its military campaign — on the map of Moscow.
The new address was chosen in a public vote in which nearly 280,000 people participated, the city hall said.
In February 2018, a street outside the Russian Embassy in Washington was named after Boris Nemtsov, an opposition politician who was shot dead outside the Kremlin in 2015. |