Providence Mayor Bullies Club Into Taking Down Ukrainian Refugee Mural Tied To Elon Musk
‘Right-wing movement’ wants to exploit murder of Ukrainian refugee, Democratic candidate claims.
A mural honoring slain Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska is “divisive,” according to Providence Mayor Brett Smiley. The club where the mural is being installed followed suit and said it will remove the depiction of the murder victim.
The painting, on the side of an LGBT club called “The Dark Lady,” depicts Zarutska, a victim of a fatal knife stabbing on a Charlotte, North Carolina train in August 2025. The Department of Justice charged Decarlos Dejuan Brown, Jr. with the brutal murder of the twenty-three year old.
Smiley, the mayor of the Rhode Island city, said he opposes the mural’s completion.
“The murder of the individual depicted in this mural was a devastating tragedy, but the misguided, isolating intent of those funding murals like the one across the county is divisive and does not represent Providence,” the mayor’s office told a local reporter. “I continue to encourage our community to support local artists whose work brings us closer together rather than divide us.”
Elon Musk funded a nonprofit that paid for this painting as well as similar murals of Zarutska across the country.
#Developing: I just spoke with Mayor Smiley’s office, and they tell me he wants this Iryna Zarutska mural taken down.
The project was already paused by the owners of The Dark Lady following community backlash.
More on this tonight on @NBC10. pic.twitter.com/ensjbRFueB
— Ryan Medeiros (@RRyanmedeiros) March 29, 2026
Smiley does not have a general issue with using taxpayer dollars to push a controversial political agenda. Last year, the mayor, who is gay, boasted about flying the LGBT pride flag at city hall.
“We raised the PRIDE flag at City Hall today to mark the start of PRIDE Month in Providence, a time to recognize the LGBTQIA+ community and reaffirm our city’s commitment to equality,” he wrote on X.
We raised the PRIDE flag at City Hall today to mark the start of PRIDE Month in Providence, a time to recognize the LGBTQIA+ community and reaffirm our city’s commitment to equality.
Join us Saturday, June 21 for New England’s largest PrideFest and RIPride ’s Illuminated Night… pic.twitter.com/iTHo4jDKWx
— Mayor Brett Smiley (@PVDMayor) June 13, 2025
The Democrat’s critical remarks of the mural have drawn condemnation.
“Not sure what is divisive about a mural honoring a woman stabbed to death by a career criminal,” Fox News correspondent Brooke Taylor asked on X.
Providence Mayor Smiley calls for removal of a mural honoring 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska who was brutally stabbed to death on a train in Charlotte last summer. The Mayor called it “divisive.” Not sure what is divisive about a mural honoring a woman stabbed to death by a career…
— Brooke Taylor (@Brooketaylortv) March 30, 2026
“Empathy’s gatekeepers have decided this is the wrong sort of victim to honor,” Guy Benson said.
Empathy’s gatekeepers have decided this is the wrong sort of victim to honor. https://t.co/Jc7Q8sXYff
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) March 30, 2026
However, Smiley has allies in the city who agree with his position.
Mayoral candidate David Morales, who is running against Smiler, claimed that the mural has become part of a “right-wing movement” to spread “division” about the safety of “certain cities.”
[Featured image from NBC 10 WJAR video]
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Comments
thanks for the article
left is allowed to celebrate murderous thuggys
but let good people want to express their thoughts….
D.C. is filled with such murals, celebrating thugs “of color” and Dhimmi-crat political and judicial icons.
What’s even more strange is that the building the mural is/was on is an LBTG building who ok’d the painting in the first place so the mayor and the usual suspect bullied gay people into stopping a mural honoring a legal refugee who was murdered by a career criminal.
Smiley worked directly under another gay Providence Mayor, David Cicilline. I guess he was the bottom man.
Who wants to bet they’d never bully anyone to take down a mural of the dead Ayatollah or a Gaza child?
“I continue to encourage our community to support local artists whose work brings us closer together rather than divide us.”
Anybody got something that looks like a female demon with a hoop skirt and tentacles?
Maybe just a peanut butter jar that we could fill with… things… and pee in it.
Hey, I know! Nobody’s done a civic statue of Buddy Cianci, Providence’s beloved two-time Democrat mayor, both of his terms cut short by separate felony convictions.
That should bring us a LOT closer together!
speaking of murderous out-of control blk people
there are a couple different stories out there showing the hoards gathering for their daily slugfest and the out numbered out gendered pd looking like the keystone cops trying to quell the herd
“Providence Mayor Brett Smiley”
Ayn Rand could not have come up with a more villainous name and Gary Larson could not have come up with a more ridiculous countenance.
If that were my building and my mural, I would gladly – gladly – take the city all the way to SCOTUS and gleefully rub his nose in my very obvious first amendment victory.
Yeah, but you’d be gay.
So disobeying your Woke Sith Master would not be in the cards.
How is this divisive? Gay commies hate America.
Wait, so now murals which depict ‘controversial themes’ are to be taken down b/c they are divisive? Got it, but FIRST apply the new standard to every lefty image, mural, flag or invocation of ‘stolen land’. When the community is completely sanitized from leftist oriented symbols and incantations which might stoke controversy/division get back to us.
BLM and thug statues of drug induced counterfeiter George Floyd
NEXT
And the painted BLM on streets with their gay rainbow painted walk ways BS
Those LGBTQ+ rainbow walkways are now banned in Texas. Saw a news article recently where a persyn was trying to repaint a LGBTQ+ rainbow walkway and got arrested.
I’m confused why anyone gives a fig on what Mayor McWoke says.
I thought it was funded privately and existing on private property?
Go pound sand.
He evidently made the owners fear the public reaction if they finished it.
Yep folks would remember it something like …Used to be a nice place, shame about parking enforcement towing delivery trucks, daily health inspections and loss of their liquor license.
ok- I wouldn’t peg the owner in question to have a spine against the 1984 Memory Hole.
This shmuck also flew the palestinian flag at city hall; but I guess that wasn’t divisive at all. Empathy’s gate keepers indeed. Only certain lives matter, put that on a bumper sticker.
Take it down…now put it back up and defend it from Democrats.
Smiley sees the mural as “divisive” because when he looks at the crime he sees a black perpetrator, while conservatives just see someone who should have been behind bars.
Tell me again – Who are the racists?
Every Providence mayor that I can recall has been white and democrat and every providence mayor has been a joke and punchline. This clown is no different. What would you expect from a state that elected a carpetbagging Kennedy as their representative and simp racist Whitehouse as one of its senators.
Rhode Island is the perfect successor to those remote sinecure provinces into which the noble families (of Massachusetts) sent their late-born, wastrel, or addled sons to govern on the family behalf.
does not represent Providence
Of course it doesn’t. You want this sort of thing to happen, based on how you treat criminals and the people they prey upon.
This is just sickening!
I wonder if the Mayor was against murals of St George Floyd? Just saying
Doesn’t his side usually tell us that art is supposed to be divisive?
Democrats should put up murals of the killer. That’s who they support.
At least that would be honest.
The Mayor probably has a poster of Lenin in his office.
The person who started this was Intercom CEO Eoghan McCabe, who pledged $500,000 in grants for a nationwide project to paint murals of murdered Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska .Elon Musk then pledged $1 million. It was McCabe’s idea.