1/ Novgorodske is a small village in the Donetsk region. The front line runs on its outskirts. From here you have a view of occupied Horlivka. But the most significant thing of the village is that locals are fighting for the restoration of its historical name - New York.

2/ They have one last step left to take - the Verkhovna Rada must give its consent to the local community decision.

3/ The story of renaming the Novgorodske to New York is ideally suited to the Russian narratives that "Ukraine is a colony of USA." Moreover, at the end of the 19th century, New York really was a colony. But it was a German colony in the Donetsk region.

4/ In addition to that, now international organizations are allocating funds to support local "sorosyats" (Soros' offspring) for the development of democratic initiatives.

5/ It is no wonder that the news of the renaming was actively spread by the Russian media. Also this topic provoked a heated discussion on the federal television channels in Russia.

6/ By the way, in 1951 the Soviet authorities renamed the settlement with the bourgeois name "New York" to the more ideologically acceptable "Novgorodske". So now the locals are restoring historical justice. Local activists did a titanic job.

7/ They held public hearings, gained the support of local deputies, got approval from the civil–military administration, and now from the Verkhovna Rada Committee.

But take your time to make jokes about "vacation in New York." Everything is much more serious.

8/ In 2014, at the beginning of the war with Russia, Novgorodske was under occupation. Later Ukrainian army liberated the village.

9/ At that time the movement for the restoration of the village's historical name "New York" resumed, as a counterweight to Russian propaganda, which actively promoted the ideas of "Russian peace" and "Russian lands" in the Donbass.

10/ I went to Novgorodske and found a map of 19th-century with the toponym New York on it, found documents of the Soviet period in which the New York Hospital is mentioned, found the tombs of German businessmen in a local cemetery.

11/ But most importantly – I found the living descendants of those Germans who lived in the village.

12/ If renaming the Novgorodske to New York happens, it will be a true ideological victory for the local community. Victory on the information front.

13/ And the most interesting thing is that this victory can happen in a front-line village, where the daily information agenda consists of Russian TV-channels and Cossack radio from Horlivka. And pro-Russian politicians are playing key roles on the political scene.

14/ The war has awakened the national self-identity of Ukrainians and there's no way back.