NEW YORK, UKRAINE --
Welcome to New York.
No, not the land of hovering skyscrapers, bustling boroughs, and fixed honking of taxis, however the metropolis in Japanese Ukraine, about an hour-and-a-half away from the Russian border.
Town was named New York within the Eighteen Nineties by German Mennonite settlers. The spouse of one of many settlers had American roots.
Six many years later, the Soviets renamed it Novgorodskoye.
However after a profitable push final summer season, Ukrainians reclaimed the unique identify, permitting them to distance themselves from their Soviet previous.
The concept was Nadiya Gordiyuk's.
Close to an ‘I like New York’ set up, she explains to me the significance of the marketing campaign and the identify change.
"The identify New York is a part of Ukraine's European historical past," she says. “We return to historic justice."
However historic clouds and symbols persist.
At a close-by park is a crumbling row of statues depicting Russian literary greats. There are decaying Stalinist-era buildings. A chemical plant was as soon as named after the founding father of the KGB.
And some kilometres away is an space managed by Russian-backed separatists who broke away from Ukraine in 2014. Greater than 13,000 folks have been killed in clashes -- greater than New York's complete inhabitants, which hovers round 10,000.
What's in it for Moscow? It permits the Kremlin to increase its sphere of affect, and destabilize Ukraine.
And now, with a army build-up alongside the border, there's a new menace New Yorkers must cope with: invasion.
"It is horrible," says Kristina Shevenko. The 28-year-old instructor was additionally a part of the modern-day push to reclaim New York's identify.
"[But] we can not afford to be scared," she says defiantly.
The identify has modified, however the considerations haven't.
New York, Ukraine, was named within the Eighteen Nineties by German Mennonite settlers. The spouse of one of many settlers had American roots.
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