After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Jerusalem's Putin Pub is now just named Pub

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/28/ [login to see] /after-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-jerusalems-putin-pub-is-now-just-named-pub
A bemused German tourist stands outside the pub he had visited the other day.

"There was Putin's pub," he says. "And today, just pub."

On Feb. 24, the day Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, the Russian-speaking co-owners of the Putin Pub yanked the Russian president's name from the sign outside.

"We think we did the right thing," says co-owner Leon Teterin, 36. "We are getting away from politics. This is supposed to be a happy place. Not to make people feel they're somewhere aggressive or [connected to] some dictator."

Israel is home to one of the world's biggest Russian-speaking diasporas. More than 1 million Jews — or those claiming Jewish relatives — from Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet states fled to Israel from the collapsing Soviet Union in waves of immigration that surged in the early 1990s.

When the Putin Pub was founded by and for Russian-speaking immigrants in 2000, Teterin says the name was a gimmick: Putin was running for president for the first time, so his was an easily recognizable name that would attract Russian speakers.