MOSCOW, January 10. /TASS/. Chief of the State Duma committee for sports, tourism and youth policies Mikhail Degtyaryov, who represents the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia [LDPR], on Wednesday proposed to respond to the renaming of the square in front of the Russian embassy in Washington and to change the official address of the U.S. embassy in Moscow.
The current address of the ambassadorial compound is 8, Devyatinsky Pereulok. The place name relates to the Church in the name of Nine Holy Martyrs of Cyzicus, a town in Anatolia who died in the 3rd century A.D.
Deputy Degtyaryov proposed to rename a narrow one-end pass adjoining the embassy into Severoamerikansky Tupik [North American Dead End] and to change the embassy’s official address to 1 Severoamerikansky Tupik - something that would definitely invoke connotations, as the Russian word ‘tupik’ has as many direct and figurative meanings as its English equivalents ‘blind alley’ or ‘dead end’.
On Tuesday, the city hall in Washington, DC, decided to rename a section of the street in front of Russian Embassy after Boris Nemtsov, a leading Russian politician of the 1990's who joined the ranks of the political opposition in the 2000’s. He was assassinated in downtown Moscow three years ago.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, the president of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation told TASS the city hall passed the bill in the first reading unanimously and sped up the procedure of its further endorsement so that Nemtsov Square could be inaugurated officially on February 27, the date that will mark the third anniversary since Nemtsov’s assassination.
"Unlike Washington with its adolescent complexes, Moscow is an olden historical city and that’s why we won’t rush to rename streets and even small lanes out of petty political considerations and because of disputes," Degtyaryov said.
"Still we can reassign the embassy to a different postal address," he said. "There is a yard pass leading up to the house of the former Financial Commissariat nearby both buildings of the embassy. We can name it Severoamerikansky Tupik [North American Dead End] to commemorate the U.S. obsessive foreign policy and to give the embassy a new address that will be 1, North American Dead End."
Degtyaryov said he had drafted letters on the issue to the Moscow Mayor’s Office and the Moscow City Duma.
Boris Nemtsov was killed in downtown Moscow overnight to February 28, 2015. On July 13, Moscow District Military Court passed a guilty verdict on five men charged with the assassination and sentenced them to jail terms varying from eleven to twenty years in high-security prisons.
The prosecutors said Ruslan Mukhudinov, a former officer of the Sever [North] battalion was the mastermind of the crime. Charges to him were issued in absentia.
Mukhudinov was placed on an international list of wanted criminals in November 2015. The prosecutors severed his case from the rest of the defendants.