As people in the D.C. area and across the country express support for Ukraine amid Russia’s deadly invasion, the District’s mayor ordered the display of Ukrainian flags along Pennsylvania Avenue.
Crews hung the flags Tuesday morning between the White House and the U.S. Capitol, hours before President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address.
A D.C. worker displayed the Ukrainian flag alongside the American flag and D.C. flag on orders from Mayor Muriel Bowser. When asked how he felt as he put up the flags, he said, “Proud, proud.”
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D.C. has previously hung flags along this stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue to make a statement. Bowser had 51-star flags hung before a congressional hearing on D.C. statehood in fall 2019. Those flags are still on display.
Symbols of support for Ukraine can be seen across D.C.
Outside the Russian embassy on Wisconsin Avenue NW, messages of hope and solidarity with Ukrainians were written on the sidewalk and posted to light poles. A man stood alone beneath the Russian flag and had this message for everyone who passed: “I oppose the invasion of Ukraine. I support the freedom and the sovereignty of the people of Ukraine. That’s why I stand here,” John O’Donnell said.
In Georgetown, heaps of flowers and supportive messages piled up outside the Ukrainian embassy.
At a memorial near Union Station honoring Ukrainians killed in an earlier conflict with the Soviet Union, sunflowers — Ukraine’s national flower — had been placed.
Blue and yellow lights bathed several landmarks in D.C. Monday night, including the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and the offices of Bowser and the D.C. Council.
