Moscow takes on US in name calling

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.