Putin Straße: Russia's Road to Ruin

Kiev
On October 22, Ekho Moskvy radio station in Moscow reported that in an act of desperation a local political activist in the Ural Mountains region, Vladimir Chukavin, managed to have a thoroughfare renamed “Putin Straße.” The new name is now written on street signs in Germanic Latin script above its former name, still shown in the original Cyrillic.

The renaming of this stretch of road was reportedly an effort to embarrass the region’s administrative apparatus into doing something about its abysmal condition. Given the near-deity status Putin is now accorded, Chukavin and his associates reasoned, no street named for Russia’s one-time KGB Lt. Col. turned president-for-life could be allowed to remain riddled with potholes.