Odesa Regional Military Administration (OVA), under the leadership of the head Oleg Kiper, launched a large-scale campaign to rename streets in the city. As part of this initiative, the names of 84 streets, boulevards and avenues were changed. However, the campaign attracted further attention after reports that the new street names may have immortalized the names of relatives of high-ranking officials.
Among the streets that changed their names, there are those that were named in honor of natives of Odessa.
In particular, the streets of satirists, authors of the novels "12 Chairs" and "The Golden Calf" by Ilf and Petrov, and the street of Isaak Babel, a writer who was born in Odessa and wrote the series "Odesa Stories", were renamed. The boulevard of Zhvanetskyi, a satirist writer born in Odessa, was also renamed
Commenting on questions about the reasons for the renaming of Zhvanetsky Street, Deputy Head of the Department of Culture of Odesa Regional State Yaroslava Reznikova said that in 2019, the satirist received the Order of Merit, 3rd degree, from the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, in Moscow.
At the same time, it is interesting that one of the streets in Odesa - Hertsena Street - will be renamed in honor of Yaroslava Reznikova's mother - publicist and poet Halyna Mohylnytska. And the memory of their family friend - Ukrainian dissident Nina Strokata-Karavanska, co-founder of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, was immortalized during the renaming of Bunina Street.
Reznikova's father, the poet Oleksa Reznikov, was friends with Nina Strokata.
