Image copyright Google Image caption This section of Wisconsin Avenue has been renamed to commemorate slain Russian MP Boris Nemtsov
Washington DC has renamed the street the Russian embassy sits on after a murdered Russian opposition politician.
The city council voted to rename the street outside Russia's embassy complex after Boris Nemtsov, who was shot outside the Kremlin in 2015.
A statement from the council said the decision to honour the "slain democracy activist" passed unanimously.
Russian politicians criticised the move, with one MP labelling it a "dirty trick".
The decision was specifically targeted at "the portion of Wisconsin Avenue in front of the Russian Embassy", according to the Washington council's statement.
Russia's Interfax news agency quoted the leader of the nationalist LDPR party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, as saying US authorities "specifically want to play dirty tricks in front of the Russian Embassy".
Another politician from the Communist Party, Dmitry Novikov, told the agency: "The US authorities have long been absorbed in their own game of interfering in Russian internal affairs."
Mr Nemtsov, a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was shot in February 2015 while walking home from a restaurant in Moscow.
A small memorial near where he was killed has frequently been vandalised, or cleared away by street cleaners late at night.
His daughter, Zhanna, travelled to Washington DC in early December to advocate for the name change.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Memorials to Boris Nemtsov in Moscow have been repeatedly cleared away or vandalised
"The current Russian political regime wants to eradicate the memory of my father, since it believes - correctly - that symbols are important and that they can potentially facilitate and inspire change," she told the council.
She said her father was "an open-minded patriot of Russia" who deserved to be commemorated.
"For now, we cannot do it in Russia because of unprecedented resistance on the part of the Russian authorities. But we have a chance to do it here - and here, it will be very difficult to dismantle," she said.
Five Chechen men were convicted over Boris Nemtsov's killing in mid-2017, but family and supporters of the slain politician believe the person who ordered the murder remains at large.
The Washington DC decision comes a day after Turkey similarly renamed the street the UAE embassy sits upon in Ankara, naming it after a military commander at the centre of a diplomatic spat.
mrcchapman on January 11st, 2018 at 14:41 UTC »
There is a LONG history of US-Russian relations doing this.
Here's a great example. During something called the 'transfermium wars', the US and USSR were trying to discover new chemical elements. The US discovered element 103, and called it lawrencium.
Neit, said the Russians. The data wasn't enough. They then claimed the discovery of 103 and called it rutherfordium.
What did the US do? When they discovered 104, they called that rutherfordium. (The Russians also claimed 104, and called it kurchatovium.)
By the end of the 1990s, three different elements had been called rutherfordium by different groups. Today it's element 104. But holy shit it was a scientific mess for a few decades.
Carb-inator on January 11st, 2018 at 14:21 UTC »
I used to live next door to the Russian Embassy, in the Carillon House. There was no cell reception ever because the embassy had some sort of blocker up. It was the worst.
GrantW01 on January 11st, 2018 at 10:02 UTC »
Reminds me of when during Apartheid, Glasgow City council renamed a street where the South African consulate sat, to Nelson Mandela Place.
Edit: spelling