‘The Motherland Isn’t Calling’: Russian Opposition Artists Resist Ukraine War

“I started drawing the victims on the second day of the war, one portrait a day, so that the process does not become mechanical. I search Facebook for the words ‘загинув’ and ‘загинула,’ ‘died’ in Ukrainian, and then I look for more information on the names. Most often there are two photos at best, and I’ve made one portrait from a photo of a dead body, so mostly, the likeness is elusive, but I’m trying to achieve a certain clarity of the impression I get from a person’s face. I do not hope to understand more.

The hashtag #следуетпомнитьтерминcollateraldamage means ‘one should remember the term collateral damage.’ It’s a quote from the press conference of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, ‘I express my condolences for the dead children, but the Russian Armed Forces use high-precision weapons. And one should remember the term collateral damage’.”