Italiiska Vulitsya, or Italian Street, runs through the center of Odesa, a Ukrainian city on the Black Sea, from the train station to city hall. It is home to the Italian consulate, the Philharmonic Theater, a department store and the Bristol Hotel, which was recently damaged by a Russian missile attack. It is always busy.

In 1880, when much of Ukraine was part of the Russian tsarist empire, the street, which was named after Italy in 1824, was renamed Pushkinskaya in honor of the Russian writer Alexander Pushkin. Last July, it reverted to its original name as part of an ongoing "decolonization" process in the country. A monument to Pushkin outside the town hall still stands but is set to be dismantled.

The Ukraine law "On the Condemnation and Prohibition of Propaganda of Russian Imperial Policy in Ukraine and the Decolonization of Toponymy" came into force in July 2023 in the middle of the war.

Russia's full-scale invasion of the country was launched in February 2022, but many consider that the war really began with Russia's occupation of the Crimean peninsula and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014.

According to the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, "Russia's imperialist policy at various times was aimed at the subjugation, exploitation and assimilation of the Ukrainian people, including........

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