Is it true that after Navalny’s death a sandwich of the same name appeared in a Ukrainian bar?

At the beginning of March 2024, a photograph of an unusual menu in Ukrainian spread across Russian-language social networks. We checked whether such a menu exists in reality.

As reported in the news, in one of the Ukrainian catering establishments on the occasion death Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has a sandwich named after him. This name allegedly became a reference to Navalny’s words “Crimea is not a sandwich”, which politicians in Ukraine liked to remember during their lifetime. The news was illustrated with a corresponding screenshot from the establishment’s page.

The information was disseminated by popular pro-Russian accounts in “LiveJournal", "VKontakte", Telegram and other social networks.

This is not the first time that the owners of Ukrainian catering establishments give cynical names to dishes amid reports of deaths abroad. “Verified” has already sorted out the news about Kivski-style cutlets after the murder of ex-deputy Ilya Kiva, and also about barbecue with Karabakh smoke after news of the resumption of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh. Both viral claims were then proven to be false.

The phrase about a sandwich came into use in 2014, when opposition politician Alexei Navalny interview on radio “Echo of Moscow” said that the Crimean peninsula, despite its contradiction to international legal norms, will never become part of Ukraine in the foreseeable future: “Is this a sandwich with sausage, or what, to return it back and forth?” Subsequently, Navalny more than once repeatedthat if he comes to power, he intends to initiate a new, freer referendum in the region. After the start of a full-scale military invasion in 2022, the position of the politician, who was already in prison at that time, changed: he statedthat Russia must recognize Ukraine within the 1991 borders and withdraw troops from its territory

In the upper left corner of the viral screenshot you can see the name of the catering outlet - “Ofenziva”.

Indeed, on the Internet a Kyiv establishment with the same logo and name has website, instagram, twitter And facebook, and in the menu (including in the format PDF) we see three varieties of a sandwich called “Navalny”.

There is no doubt that these pages belong to a real establishment - it is located in the Podolsk district of Kyiv at 20 Mezhigorskaya street, and has numerous reviews, more than once mentioned in reviews. Institution opened in the spring of 2023 and positions itself as “the first meme-military art bar in the capital.” It is noted that the design of “Ofenziva” (translated from Ukrainian as “offensive”) uses elements of captured Russian equipment, and the menu also includes the dish “Putin"—Canadian street food with potatoes and toppings.

When a screenshot of the “Navalny” sandwich began to circulate online, representatives of “Ofenziva” in X confirmed news and invited users to try this dish in the establishment itself.

The question remains to be answered: was this name for the sandwich a reaction to the death of a politician in a Russian prison or was the name given earlier, since the phrase about the sandwich has been known for a long time? We know for sure that at least in the summer of 2023 there will be no such dish in menu hasn't happened yet. Its copies (the last one from July 2023) are preserved in the Internet archive. The employees of “Ofenziva” indirectly gave an answer to this question in X, stating that this dish is “new milestone”, and the idea for the name appeared a long time ago, almost a year ago, but “this time it’s already it is forbidden was to be ignored."

Thus, unlike a number of similar cases, the Navalny sandwich is a real dish served in Kyiv, and it appeared after the death of the Russian opposition politician.

Cover photo: screenshot from social networks.

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