The Russian consulate in New York has been vandalised with red spray-paint hours before Vladimir Putin illegally annexed more occupied areas of Ukraine.
The New York Police Department says officers responded to the building, which is on East 91st Street in Manhattan, at around 1.30am on Friday.
The building’s ground floor, including doors and windows, had been daubed with red paint but no slogans or words were visible.
No arrests have been made and NYPD is investigating it as a possible bias incident, according to The New York Times.
The consulate is located within a four-storey building on the Upper East Side, several blocks away from Central Park.
The vandalism took place as Moscow went through with illegally annexing regions of Ukraine in the wake of bogus elections.
The Kremlin launched its unprovoked attack on Ukraine on 24 February 2022 with the expectation the country would fall within days.
But it has since suffered massive losses of troops and equipment and has become bogged down in a conflict that is now in its seventh month.
Ukraine is now applying for accelerated Nato membership after Vladimir Putin signed treaties to annex the four Ukrainian regions.
The Russian president claimed Russia had “four new regions” in a speech at the Kremlin to hundreds of dignitaries, before a concert in Red Square to celebrate.
“This is the will of millions of people,” Mr Putin said. “People living in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson region and Zaporizhzhia region are becoming our compatriots forever.”
The US and the head of the United Nations had all said the annexation ceremony would have no legal value.
