Activists have erected a new street sign outside the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C., to show support for Ukraine.
A sign reading “President Zelensky Way” was posted outside the Consulate of Russia on Sunday afternoon in honor of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has been fighting to fend off the invading Russian army.
“It was a symbolic gesture on our part,” Claude Taylor, photographer and chair of the progressive Mad Dog PAC, told HuffPost.
Taylor said the PAC’s longtime billboard designer, who is going only by his first name, Sean, is currently in Dnipro, Ukraine, with his wife, a citizen of the country. Sean and his wife are safe, but they are hiding intermittently in bomb shelters
“You know, sirens are going off in the background and he’s like, ‘Wait a minute. I’ll be right back. Gotta go to the shelter,’” Taylor said.
The Russian embassy is located on a small offshoot along Wisconsin Avenue, a major street in D.C.
Protesters outside the building have been calling on Russia to end its war, writing messages on the pavement in chalk and waving Ukrainian flags.
Taylor said he hoped the block that the Russian embassy takes up could be renamed permanently.
In 2020, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser renamed a two-block pedestrian section of downtown Washington Black Lives Matter Plaza, after the Department of Public Works painted the words “Black Lives Matter” along the road to show support for protesters following the police killing of George Floyd.
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.
Mad Dog PAC is known for putting up billboards and signs calling out Republican leaders, including former President Donald Trump. The group previously put up signs around D.C. renaming prominent streets to honor Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist who was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey.