Ukrainian flag spurs controversy at Bardstown restaurant | Local News | thenewsenterprise.com
A Ukrainian flag in support of the war-afflicted country has brought a Bardstown restaurant under fire.
Colton’s Steak House General Manager Ben Ashlock said he replaced one of the two Texas flags above the restaurant’s entrance more than a month ago and never thought it would bring in a flood of complaints, calls and hateful messages like it did over the weekend.
“We had the phone ringing off the hook with ‘why did we take the American flag down and why are we flying a foreign flag?’ ” the Elizabethtown native said about April 9. “I finally just had to stop taking calls.”
While Ashlock juggled the back of a busy kitchen, people began taking out their frustration on the hostess, announcing they were going to boycott the restaurant for its support of another country, calling Colton’s unpatriotic and perpetuating a false narrative of a war in Ukraine — a conspiracy theory which has garnered fast attention on social media in far-right circles — and accusing them of replacing an American flag, which was never there.
“We had never intended to cause a controversy because it was just two Texas flags,” he said. “So when we replaced one Texas flag with the Ukraine flag, we didn’t expect to have any uproar about it.”
For Ashlock, the war in Ukraine is more than real because he has lost friends to sniper fire and has others living under Russian occupation in his adopted son’s county.
In the days since Russia invaded the sovereign country, he checks up on friends almost daily, he said.
“It’s surreal, you know,” Ashlock said. “One of the things that’s been most hurtful to hear is when people say, ‘the war isn’t real.’ ”
The flag was meant as a gesture for others who feel as he does.
“It was something that if somebody knew about what was going on, they could be encouraged that we are remembering them during this time,” Ashlock said. “I sent pictures to my friends in Ukraine showing them that we are trying our best not to forget about the crisis going on, even in Kentucky.”
The restaurant since has replaced the second Texas flag with an American one and a similar display can be found at the Radcliff location which Ashlock previously managed.
“We are very much proud to be an American company,” Ashlock said. “We made sure it (the American flag) flew a little higher than the Ukrainian.”
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