Ukrainian activists urge Philadelphia to end ‘sister city’ relationship with Russian town

Ukrainian activists want Philadelphia to suspend its “sister city” relationship with a Russian town, saying the bond lends cover and legitimacy to a murderous Moscow regime.

The request comes as leaders of cities across the United States either end or pause their sibling connections to Russian communities, believing it wrong to maintain those ties, however symbolic, amid the death and destruction wrought by the invasion of Ukraine.

The City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, advocates say, cannot stay sibling to Nizhny Novgorod, a Volga River town perhaps best known as the birthplace of the writer Maxim Gorky, for whom it was once named. The town serves as a receiving site for Ukrainians who have been forcibly sent to uncertain futures in Russia.

“This is our sister city?” said Ilya Knizhnik, a leader in Philly Stands With Ukraine and other groups. “There’s a reason we don’t have sister cities in, say, North Korea.”

He and others met with members of Mayor Jim Kenney’s staff last month, urging them to suspend the tie and to make a new, permanent sister of a city in Ukraine.

“No decision has been made,” said Kevin Lessard, the mayor’s director of communications. “We value our sister city relationships, and the valuable cultural exchange they provide our city, but we also condemn the ongoing conflict being waged by Russia on Ukraine. We look forward to further discussions on the topic.”

In 2013, then-City Councilmember Kenney urged Mayor Michael Nutter to sever ties with Nizhny Novgorod, deploring its treatment of LGBT citizens after the city issued a ban on what it called “homosexual propaganda.”

“I believe that we — as the cradle of liberty and a beacon to the world for freedom of expression and human rights — cannot sit idly by without expressing our indignation and opposition,” Kenney told the Metro newspaper at the time.

A “sister city” is a broad, long-term partnership formed by two communities in two countries, recognized by an agreement between the highest elected or appointed official in both places. Sister Cities International says 1,800 relationships exist among cities and towns in 140 countries.

Those agreements develop in many ways, through mayors who happen to know each other, historical associations, trade partnerships, even shared challenges. They commonly include business and cultural exchanges, where people in one place travel to teach and learn from the other.

Since the invasion, some American cities have maintained or even reaffirmed their Russian ties.

But Chicago, Dallas, Buffalo, Charlotte, Norfolk, Des Moines, Tallahassee, Colorado Springs, Louisville, Ky., Eugene, Ore., and others have suspended or ended their liaisons, and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has asked more cities to do the same.

“What do these connections give you? Probably nothing,” he told the U.S. Conference of Mayors in June. “But they give Russia the opportunity to say that it is not isolated, even after beginning such a war. … Please do not allow those who have become murderers to call you their brothers and sisters.”

Major American cities typically have multiple sisters, and Philadelphia has 11 in 10 countries: Abruzzo, Italy; Florence, Italy; Aix-en-Provence, France; Douala, Cameroon; Incheon, South Korea; Kobe, Japan; Tel Aviv, Israel; Tianjin, China; Torun, Poland; Frankfurt, Germany; and Nizhny Novgorod.

The last is a city of 1.2 million people in western Russia, set at the confluence of the Volga and Oka Rivers about 260 miles northeast of Moscow.

From there Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible launched military expeditions, and during World War II, when the Soviet Union and United States were allies, the town became a major production center. The Soviet regime renamed the city “Gorky” to honor the writer born there in 1868, and the original name was restored after the U.S.S.R. collapsed.

Today Nizhny Novgorod ranks among the largest cities in Russia, the center of an industrial region that produces cars, ships, engines, glass, leather, and chemicals.

In September, President Vladimir Putin visited the Nizhny Novgorod region to attend Russian-Belarusian training exercises that schooled soldiers “to deliver targeted fire attack and crush the enemy,” according to the official news agency TASS.

English news media reported in June that police in the city degraded 20 women suspected of protesting the war, forcing them to strip naked in front of male officers and police cameras. Last month an Associated Press investigation described how Russian authorities offered Ukrainian war victims the choice of living in Russia or dying in Ukraine, removing them to places like Nizhny Novgorod.

“It’s not like we’re friends with just a city — we’re currently supporting an occupier of Ukraine,” said Marianna Tretiak of Philadelphia, the advocacy-committee chairwoman of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America. “What’s going on now doesn’t seem a very ‘brotherly love’ type of thing.”

Sister Cities International grew out of the Cold War, founded in 1956 by President Dwight Eisenhower to promote peace through person-to-person, city-to-city contacts. After Russia invaded Ukraine, the organization’s CEO urged American communities to continue their rapport with Russian partners.

Suspending ties might seem like a positive protest, Leroy Allala said, but actually it “has the complete opposite effect — closing a vital and, ofttimes, last channel of communication with vulnerable or isolated populations.”

Philadelphia’s commitment to international associations is evident in Sister Cities Park, founded in 1976 and located just east of Logan Circle.

Its accord with Nizhny Novgorod began in 1992, with a government grant that sent local attorneys to teach Russian residents about economics and democracy. In subsequent years the Philadelphia Boys Choir performed there, the Russian National Baseball Team played here, and chef Michele Haines, founder of the Spring Mill Cafe in Conshohocken, led a delegation overseas.

“It’s a pretty quiet relationship,” said Andrea Silva, interim president and CEO of Citizen Diplomacy International, which administrates the Sister Cities program in Philadelphia.

The U.S. has enacted waves of economic sanctions against Russia but not cut off diplomatic relations, and CDI follows that lead, she said.

“We really think it’s important to keep those doors of communication open,” Silva said.

Some activists pushing to end the sister-city link also seek the removal of the Russian flag from the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. They say discussions with city officials have shifted toward the idea of placing an explanatory marker near the flag.

Pausing the sister-city connection should be obvious, they say.

“We shouldn’t have this relationship at a time of mass murder and rape,” Knizhnik said. “It’s very embarrassing that Philadelphia, cradle of freedom, is not willing to drop a really empty relationship.”