{"id":584852,"date":"2022-04-01T14:45:59","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T14:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=5c3a340009b4c9ff19aa13336457a4dd"},"modified":"2022-04-01T14:45:59","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T14:45:59","slug":"anti-russian-bigotry-increases-in-the-us-and-beyond-amid-putins-war-on-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/04\/01\/anti-russian-bigotry-increases-in-the-us-and-beyond-amid-putins-war-on-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Russian Bigotry Increases in the US and Beyond Amid Putin\u2019s War on Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a warm Thursday in March, Firouza, an immigrant from Uzbekistan, is sitting in front of her shop in Brooklyn\u2019s Little Odessa, a section of Brighton Beach.<\/a> It’s home to more than 35,000 people, many of them born in the eastern European countries that once comprised the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

Firouza is methodically cutting pieces of blue and yellow ribbon while sitting on a chair in the store\u2019s entryway. After she amasses a small pile, she ties the strips into a bow and adds a safety pin. A dollar buys one and business is brisk as diverse customers stop by to purchase this small token of solidarity with their Ukrainian neighbors.<\/p>\n

Firouza also sells Ukrainian flags and the multicolored flowered shawls and scarves that are popular in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

She has been doing this, she says, since the third day of Vladimir Putin\u2019s war.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know anyone in Ukraine and have never been there,\u201d she tells Truthout<\/em>. \u201cBut the war made me depressed. Everyone in this neighborhood is stressed out. We can\u2019t sleep. Children and women are dying. Bombs are falling. I had to do something to raise money to help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Firouza is not the only local business owner to express this sentiment. In fact, dozens of restaurants and stores along Brighton Beach Avenue, the community\u2019s commercial strip, are flying the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine and many windows bear messages calling for peace that are written in the Cyrillic alphabet. A few shops are also collecting money and supplies for shipment abroad, including antibacterial wipes, aspirin, bandages, batteries, diapers, headlamps, Ibuprofen, ready-to-eat packaged food and meal bars, tape, tourniquets, underwear, socks, T-shirts and hats.<\/p>\n

Shopkeeper after shopkeeper reports that such expressions of solidarity are happening throughout the U.S., wherever large concentrations of Ukrainians live or have ties.<\/p>\n

Manhattan\u2019s East Village, for example, once boasted a large Ukrainian population, and while gentrification has pushed out most of those who came here in the 1970s, \u201880s and \u201890s, several Ukrainian businesses, a credit union and two Ukrainian churches are still located in the area. Signs with the words “Slava Ukraini” — Glory to Ukraine — appear in many shop windows. Lampposts on every corner of busy Second Avenue are covered in anti-Putin posters, ads for an April 16th \u201cComics for Ukraine\u201d fundraiser, and pictures of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Colorful posters on doors urge residents to donate goods and money to ongoing relief efforts.<\/p>\n