Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko wants to name a street in Kiev after the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presidential office announced Monday.
The Ukrainian president is asking the parliament’s factions to support his initiative to rename Ivan Kudrya Street after McCain, said Irina Lutsenko, an aide to Poroshenko.
Lutsenko’s remarks were noted by Russia’s state-run media, given how the gesture doubles as an homage to the senator and a political jab at Russia. Poroshenko’s parliamentary allies, in endorsing the proposal, cited McCain’s support for Ukraine during the still-simmering conflict with Russia for control of the eastern region of the country.
“One would find it very difficult to find a more committed and loyal friend of Ukraine,” top lawmaker Artur Gerasimov said, per local media. “Many Ukrainian politicians do not go to the frontline, and John McCain joined Ukrainian Marines on the New Year’s Eve — despite all the shooting.”
McCain visited the Ukrainian military on New Year’s Eve 2016, in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. “We stand w/ them in their fight against #Putin’s aggression,” he tweeted at the time.
Poroshenko’s choice of which street to rename is also laden with political connotation. Ivan Kudrya was a Soviet intelligence officer, born in the Kiev region, who was executed by the Nazis after compiling a list of double agents.
The history of the Second World War in Ukraine has a contested legacy, as Ukrainian nationalists regard their era as a Soviet satellite state with distaste while Russia touts the history of the fight against the Nazis as a point of pride and identifies any effort to remove a Soviet-era World War II monument as proof that Ukrainian nationalism is a neofascist movement.
“Ever since Ukraine’s February revolution, the Kremlin has characterized the new leaders in Kiev as a ‘fascist junta’ made up of neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, set on persecuting, if not eradicating, the Russian-speaking population,” as the BBC noted in 2014. “But Ukrainian officials and many in the media err to the other extreme. They claim that Ukrainian politics are completely fascist-free. This, too, is plain wrong. As a result, the question of the presence of the far-right in Ukraine remains a highly sensitive issue, one which top officials and the media shy away from.”
Poroshenko attended McCain’s funeral last week. “Surely no coincidence that #JohnMCain – who planned every detail of today’s memorial – invited Ukraine’s President @poroshenko & seated him beside @jensstoltenberg, head of NATO,” Samantha Power, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under former President Barack Obama, tweeted Saturday.
