WARSAW: Since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine last month, “Skamiejka”, a popular Russian restaurant in the Polish capital Warsaw has been flooded with hate emails and online posts with gruesome images.
Anonymous phone calls have told the staff — most of whom are in fact Ukrainian — to “get the hell out” of Poland.
Tamara Rochminska, its owner, has shown solidarity with Ukraine by posting its flag on the restaurant’s Facebook page, imploring users to stop targeting its staff.
“Please remember that Russia and Russians are not the same as Putin and his imperialist designs,” Rochminska, who has lived in Poland for the last four decades, said in the post.
A lot of the vitriol at protests across the world has indeed focused on President Vladimir Putin, who gave the order for Russia’s assault.
But sometimes ordinary Russians living abroad have become the targets.
In Germany, the windows of a shop selling Russian wares were vandalised, a restaurant refused to serve clients with Russian passports and a doctor refused to treat Russian patients.
Social media posts dripping in sarcasm urged Russians to “flee Germany” adding that the “integration of Russians is not possible, except in the Gulag Archipelago”, referring to the system of Stalinist-era forced labour camps where millions of prisoners perished.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday said there was “a growing atmosphere of hatred against Russians in several Western countries”.
In Britain, home to an array of Russian oligarchs, Conservative MP Roger Gale, suggested every Russian living there should be expelled and “sent home”.
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