“As if we have something to do with this war, blaming us for what the Putin regime is doing. “We started getting more serious calls, with people yelling and screaming at us,” says Gazaryan, who is ethnically Armenian but has lived in Russia.
He didn’t pay much attention to the first few calls, which he attributed to kids messing around, but then some of the calls seemed to threaten violence. In the week after the war began, he says, the restaurant received about 15 to 20 abusive phone calls. But after Russia invaded Ukraine, Gazaryan decided to answer it himself.
restaurant, Pushkin Russian Restaurant, which serves food from former Soviet republics. Ike Gazaryan’s wife, Yulia, typically answers the phone for their San Diego, Calif.