The renaming of a piazza in a small Italian town has caused a diplomatic incident.<\/p>\n
The square in Ceriano Laghetto, in the northern province of Lombardy, is now called “Martyrs of Odessa” in memory of people killed during the recent upheaval in the Ukrainian city. It is named for pro-Russian separatists who died during clashes with Ukrainian government supporters in May 2014, Mayor Dante Cattaneo, of the right-wing Northern League party, tells Il Fatto Quotdiano<\/em>. <\/p>\n More than 30 people were killed in a fire after barricading themselves into a government-run building in the city to escape the mayhem.<\/p>\n The renaming of the piazza – which is used as a car park – has angered Ukraine’s ambassador in Rome, Yevhen Perelygin. <\/p>\n In a letter to the region’s prefect, he asks for the decision to be revoked, saying the events of May 2014 “are still unclear”. <\/p>\n He also suggested in an interview that the decision was “manipulated by political forces who support the Russian initiative” in Ukraine, something the mayor refutes. <\/p>\n Mr Cattaneo appears to be defiant, despite a request from the regional authority to undo the change, and says Italy shouldn’t be allowing foreign interference in decision making. “Piazza for the Martyrs of Odessa is there and will remain,” he tweeted. <\/p>\n “In Ceriano there’s a democratically elected local authority. It is not Ukraine.”<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The renaming of a piazza in a small Italian town has caused a diplomatic incident. The square in Ceriano Laghetto, in the northern province of Lombardy, is now called “Martyrs of Odessa” in memory of people killed during the recent upheaval in the Ukrainian city. It is named for pro-Russian separatists who died during clashes … Continue reading “Italian town renames piazza ‘Martyrs of Odessa’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[2556,10997,10999,11000,7322,10998,7484],"class_list":["post-17738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-italy","tag-lombardy","tag-martyrs","tag-martyrs-of-odessa","tag-mayor","tag-piazza","tag-ukraine"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17739,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17738\/revisions\/17739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}