Oleg had come to the Netherlands with his family precisely because he did not want his son to grow up in Putin’s Russia. “When I opened the restaurant, I wanted to show a positive side of Russia,” he says.
When the war started, he changed the designation ‘Russian restaurant’ to ‘Eastern European restaurant’. “We actively spoke out against the war, and people who knew us supported us,” says Oleg. Yet he saw the clientele drop drastically.
Closed
At the end of last year, he was forced to pull the plug on the restaurant. Not only a pity for himself, but also for his staff. “Two of our chefs came from Ukraine.”
Oleg is not the only entrepreneur struggling since the Russian invasion. Ira also has to deal with the consequences of the war on a daily basis. Together with her husband she owns a store in Amsterdam for Eastern European and Russian products.
The couple is Armenian, but faced a lot of anti-Russian sentiment especially at the start of the war, especially since their shop was called ‘Priwet Rossia’, ‘Hello Russia.’ The store already had that name when they took it over, a month before the war started.
Bad reviews
In the first days of the invasion, someone threw a stone through the windows of the shop. After that, hate messages continued to come through the internet and telephone. “It is less than in the first months, but it keeps happening,” says Ira.
Even after they changed the name of their store, which is now just called ‘Priwet’, the threatening calls and bad reviews from people who had never been in the store at all kept coming in. Fortunately, things are going a bit better in the store itself. “In the beginning there were fewer people, but now it’s not too bad.”
No politics
Ira is still very much affected by the negative image. “It continues to take a lot of effort and energy to keep everyone happy and to keep explaining that we are not a Russian store,” she says. I try every day to make everyone feel safe. This is just a store, not a political place.”
Yet not all Russian shops in the Netherlands are affected by the war. At Moskva, a Russian supermarket in Hilversum, it is busier than ever, according to owner Irina. “Many more people are coming than before. Many Ukrainian refugees have come to Hilversum,” she says. “They also come to our store.”
She does not discuss politics with her clients. “People come here because they think it’s a good store.”
2023-08-11 17:41:39
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