Putin calls them ‘gnats,’ but war back home strengthens ties of a community
Ukrainian Olena Doronina and Russian Alexandra Ignatkina huddled over their cell phones to watch videos sent by Doronina’s son and siblings, who are trapped in Kherson, a Black Sea port city in the south of Ukraine occupied by Russian soldiers.
They watched a video showing destruction in Kyiv, sent by Ignatkina’s friend, and another clip of anti-war protests in Moscow, sent by Ignatkina’s brother.
“I am worried about everyone in Ukraine, because they could be bombed in the next minute, and I am worried about anyone in Russia who says, ‘No war!’ because they could be put in jail for 10 years,” Ignatkina said.
Doronina and Ignatkina met to share news about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at Matryoshka, the Russian grocery and delicatessen in Sunny
Isles Beach where Doronina had just finished her shift as a cashier. Similar tense conversations unfolded inside and outside the store, which is a popular local gathering place for Eastern European immigrants.
But unlike back home, the war seems to have only strengthened ties between neighbors in this small oceanfront city of 22,342, where the greatest concentration of Eastern Europeans live in South Florida, according to U.S. Census data. Most hail from Russia and Ukraine but also from Belarus, Moldova, Georgia and other former Soviet bloc countries, and they say they have always been linked by language, culture and history and rarely allowed old borders to be barriers to friendship.
That’s evident in the aisles of Matryoshka, where shoppers filled their baskets with dried fish, rye bread, borscht, dumplings, caviar and Baltika beer as ads for a chess club and a real estate firm played in Russian from loudspeakers. They paused to commiserate about what was happening to loved ones or neighborhoods back home since Russian President Vladimir Putin attacked Ukraine.
“Putin is crazy and he will destroy not just Ukraine but Russia, too,” said Ignatkina, a hair stylist who immigrated from Stavropol nine years ago after police beat her up during an anti-Putin rally. “No thank you, I will never go back to Russia. Very, very few people here support Putin and those who do are the zombies who have been brainwashed.”
The war has suddenly thrust Sunny Isles Beach and its expat population into the spotlight. Putin himself took a shot this month at “Miami” Russians, branding them spoiled traitors to the Motherland. National media has trotted out the “Little Moscow” label that locals despise.
While there may not be any high-profile oligarchs actually living in Sunny Isles Beach, there is plenty of Russian money of opaque origin that has been poured into gleaming highrises, exotic cars, yachts and corporate businesses.
Six Trump-branded towers have been marketed directly to Russians because Donald Trump’s big, brash persona and his friendly relationship with Putin hold great allure in Russia. A 2016 Miami Herald investigation found that most of the units in Trump Towers are owned by shell companies and at least 13 buyers have been the subject of government investigations, either personally or through their companies, including members of a RussianAmerican organized crime group convicted in the United States for their role in an illegal high-stakes sports betting ring that catered to oligarchs, and a Ukrainian businessman arrested for fraud and accused of money laundering.
There’s even a rumor around town that Putin, described as one of the richest men in the world by economists who have investigated his secret sources of wealth, owns property on the beach.
The city, along with other wealthy Russian enclaves, is now on the radar of federal agencies working to freeze or seize assets linked to the Russian leader as well as oligarchs who have made a fortune off of his government.
FROM MOTEL ROW TO MILLIONAIRE’S ROW
The last few decades have seen a remarkable transformation for what was once a middle-class tourist haven defined by its kitschy “Motel Row.” Today, it’s more like “Millionaire’s Row” — a selfproclaimed “Florida’s Riviera” that is home to affluent, transient luxury condo dwellers overlooking the beach from sterile sky’s-the-limit towers stacked one after another along 2.5 miles of Collins Avenue.
From the 1950s heyday starring the Castaways Island Hotel and its Shipwreck Bar, only the Thunderbird Motel and the Sahara — with its dilapidated camels and shepherds still standing sentinel — survive. They’ve been replaced by the 50story Muse Residences; the Acqualina Mansions, where the 9,100-squarefoot, 47th-floor penthouse sold for $27 million last year, and the future 70story Bentley condo, where — as is also the case with the 57-story Porsche Design Tower — an automotive elevator will whisk your $300,000 car to your private garage. The Federal Aviation Administration has just approved a St. Regis tower that can boast that it’s one foot taller than the Bentley.
Russia’s war on Ukraine has placed a spotlight on Sunny Isles Beach, home to the largest concentration of Russian speakers in South Florida.
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Very, very few people here support Putin and those who do are the zombies who have been brainwashed.
Russian immigrant Alexandra Ignatkina