The two cities are united now in their common fear and loathing of Russia.
NEW YORK — New Yorkers are not easily distracted from their solipsistic love of the “greatest city on earth.” It takes a hurricane, a terror attack or — at the very least — hostile foreign powers meddling with their cherished electoral system to look beyond the shores of their own island.
For the first time in the more than two decades I’ve been dropping in on friends in Manhattan from the Russian-speaking world, Russia now dominates the conversation at the dinner table. People are desperate to understand what Putin is really after, and what he expects from a Donald Trump presidency. Does he want the United States to pull out of Syria? Does he hope Trump will break up NATO? What is his position on the Paris climate agreement?
New Yorkers — now convinced like Kievans that Putin is behind all their problems — have bought into the idea that the Russians manipulated the elections in Trump’s favor and the president is now in hock to the Kremlin’s wily leader. His actions during the next four years will only be a manifestation of Putin’s supreme will.
The New Yorker cover from March depicting a dapper Putin coolly gazing through his magnifying glass at a flustered Trumpian butterfly sums up the dominant mood about Russia in New York City.
Ukrainians diss Russia for everything that goes wrong, from regular power outages to random acts of violence.
Walk along Chelsea’s High Line — disused railway tracks turned into a funky walkway garden — and an image of Trump embracing a shirtless Putin stares out at passersby from an apartment window. Head to the gilded Trump Towers in midtown Manhattan and hawkers offer pins showing Trump and Putin with lips locked, over the slogan “Make Fascism Great Again.” A protestor holds up a sign showing Putin holding aloft a baby Trump.
“We’re the United States of Russia now,” he shouts, as some passersby clap or join him in chanting.
New York’s anti-Putin hysteria evokes memories of Ukrainians screaming “Putin is a Dick” during football matches or political demonstrations in the capital, Kiev. The two cities, so far apart in temperament and geography, are united now in their common fear and loathing of Russia.
While Ukraine, which is fighting a proxy war with Russia in the east, has more ironclad reasons for despising Putin than paranoid New Yorkers, the manifestations of the phenomena are similar in both cities.
People walk along a path in the High Line park 9in the Chelsea district of New York City | Spencer Platt/Getty Images
I was almost blacklisted from a friend’s dinner party when I casually mentioned I admired Putin’s skill at playing the West. Similarly, in Kiev any signs of sympathy for Russia are immediately branded “traitorous.”
New Yorkers, like Ukrainians, have developed a habit of blaming the Russians for everything that goes wrong in their lives. Ukrainians diss Russia for regular power outages and random acts of violence. An unusually chilly spring was blamed on a cold wind blowing south from Moscow.
Now, the internet is packed with memes mocking the U.S. Democrats’ tendency to blame the Russians: One shows two morose dogs staring up at the owner with the headline, “The Russians pooped in the hallway.”
New Yorkers are now avid Putin-watchers. His exclusive interviews with NBC host Megyn Kelly or Oliver Stone are prime time television in the U.S. Like Kievans, New Yorkers pick through his words with intensity, hoping to glean some insight into the Machiavellian mind of the tyrant who might be pulling strings in Washington.
The stock of a Kremlin watcher has never been higher, either in Kiev or in New York. At an exclusive underground poker room in New York City, the manager jokes that I’d only gain admittance after sharing some “Putin secrets;” in bars in downtown Manhattan, women ask me to teach them some Russian phrases. Back in Kiev, people want to know whether Trump will make a deal with Putin and throw them under the bus. In both cities, speculation over Putin’s intentions fuel heated discussions late into the night.
After a shot of hard liquor, some New Yorkers (mostly Republicans) will fess up to admiring Putin for his leadership, sometimes even genius, in turning Russia into a force to be reckoned with again on the international stage.
And, for all their visceral hatred of the Russian leader, some Kievans occasionally speak highly of Putin for being a “strong leader,” drawing a contrast to their weak-willed politicians. By some accounts, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, whose approval rating is stuck in the high teens, is still less popular than Putin in his own country.
Were the U.S. to come into direct conflict with Moscow, Washington might find itself turning to Kiev for tips on sealing itself off from destabilizing Russian influences.
There’s one critical difference between New York and Kiev, however. In order to cope with Russia’s aggression and insulate itself from the Kremlin’s weaponized “fake news,” Ukraine has banned Russian television channels and internet sites. Russian artists are not welcome in Ukraine anymore. The government even barred Russia’s Eurovision entry from participating in the song contest this year, hosted in Kiev. Ukraine has in effect sealed itself off from its big aggressive neighbor to the north and visiting Russians are routinely grilled at the borders before being admitted.
New York, meanwhile, has a large Russian population, with more than half a million Russians said to be living in the five boroughs of the city. Manhattan is dotted with Russian restaurants and bars, and visiting Russian bands sell out concert halls during their tours. A food truck serving Russian dumplings in the West Village attracts long queues. For all their suspicion of Russian meddling, New Yorkers haven’t turned against Russians themselves yet.
But things move quickly in the age of Trump. Were the U.S. to come into direct conflict with Moscow, Washington might find itself turning to Kiev for tips on sealing itself off from destabilizing Russian influences.
Vijai Maheshwari is a writer and entrepreneur based in Kiev, Ukraine. He spent six years in Moscow in the 1990s, and was also editor-in-chief of Russian Playboy.
Image: © flickr.com, Mike Maguire
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