For a year, members of the Washington, D.C. community have been taunting the Russian Embassy on Wisconsin Ave.
At first, it was some projections onto the building, which they tried to block out with their own spotlights. It turned into a light show of cat and mouse for the world to see, leading to ridicule online of the embassy.
One weekend, activists built their own street signs renaming the road after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The embassy took it down fairly quickly.
Activists then started planting sunflowers in the easement outside the embassy, which is public property not governed by the Russians. The embassy staff ripped them out of the ground, but activists kept planting more and more, then a row across the street in the easement there too. At one point, a car with diplomatic plates sped into the drive of the embassy and an occupant ripped the flowers from the area and threw them under the wheels.
The taunting continued Saturday night when a man the activists thought was the same one that ripped up the sunflowers crossed the street with an umbrella to block the projections onto the embassy.
"This started as a special military operation just to be annoying," Ben Wittes, one of the protesters, joked on a live feed of the protest. He went on to say that they started asking embassy staff to defect, and that was when they came out to confront them. At this point, they've never faced off against the protesters, he said.
"They've been reduced to trying to block a protest with an umbrella," Wittes narrated. "Oh! He's switching umbrellas! Look! It's the Russian military with two umbrellas! We've got multiple umbrellas, double-fisted with the U.S. Secret Service watching."
Wittes noted that before the Secret Service agents came over to keep an eye, the Russian staffer was getting pushy and shoving the protesters.
The group had two projectors going. One was a Ukraine flag, and the other was a map of Ukraine. The embassy staffer seemed most angered by the map projection. The problem with having two projectors was that the individual man, even with two umbrellas, couldn't block everything.
"That's the ultimate expression of Russian power, dancing with an umbrella!" Wittes laughed with the crowd that had gathered.
"This guy has breached the unwritten understanding of the special military operations that you stay on your own side of the street," Wittes said. He went on to explain that henceforth the Russian man should be known as the "umbrella man."
After about an hour, John, a neighbor, brought out a ladder for the protesters to stand on for the projections so that the Russian staffer couldn't hold his umbrella up high enough.
"Oh, my God, you stink! Go wash your armpits!" one woman mocked the man. "Don't you Russians wash up?"
"You gonna cry?" one woman shouted at him. "Is that all the Russian Embassy can afford? One umbrella boy?"
The crowd offered him a beer and asked him if he wanted to join their side. He remained largely silent and frowned.
Ultimately, the staffer walked back to the embassy and Wittes tracked him as much as he could, showing where he went as he walked away.
"I hope you can appreciate that the Russian military has been reduced to blocking spotlights with umbrellas," Wittes said once he signed off of the live feed.
You can see the live feed below or at the link here:
Special Military Operation: Just Being Annoyingwww.youtube.com
