A literal sign of support for Ukraine’s president stands outside the Russian Embassy on Wisconsin Avenue in Northwest D.C.
Political activist Claude Taylor placed the green street sign, reading “President Zelensky Way,” on a metal pole, anchored by a block of concrete on the sidewalk, outside the embassy gate on Sunday.
“It’s a small gesture, a silent form of protest,” Taylor told WTOP on Tuesday morning. “We wanted to show our outrage to (Russian) President Putin, and show our support for the people of Ukraine,” and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy is the Ukranian president’s preferred spelling of his name when transliterated into the Latin alphabet from Cyrillic.
Taylor has been involved in similar shows of support. His Mad Dog PAC installed a ”Khashoggi Way” sign outside the Saudi Arabian Embassy in 2018 following the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
In 2018, the D.C. Council renamed the stretch of Wisconsin Avenue in front of the Russian embassy “Boris Nemtsov Plaza” in honor of a critic of Russia’s Putin.
If supporters want to consider permanently renaming a street in honor of Zelenskyy, they will likely have to wait.
In 2018, a call to permanently rename the street outside the Saudi embassy for Khashoggi was put on hold after D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said D.C. law prohibits public spaces from being named in honor of any person who is alive, or until two years after they’ve died.
