Ukraine<\/a>, many people affected by the conflict are being treated and supported by M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res (MSF). I was able to meet some of them: in a rehabilitation centre for war veterans in Cherkasy and a mental health clinic for internally displaced families in Vinnytsia.<\/p>\nSince Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I\u2019ve drawn many political cartoons about the war; drawings that feature Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Vladimir Putin and the occasional bear. It looked very different from the ground, where war is fought and lived by ordinary people, just like us. In the hospitals I visited in May this year, I sketched the precise way in which war is mapped on individual bodies and listened to the stories behind their scars. I drew what people told me, as well as what I saw, because trauma and hope are intangible things of memory and imagination. There\u2019s nothing left to draw of an amputated limb but memories \u2013 the same could be said for a lost home or relative. These things are beyond a camera\u2019s reach, which I think gives you licence to reach for a pencil.<\/p>\n
I watched an MSF psychiatrist help a soldier regain feeling in his paralysed hand using tiny scraps of textured materials intended to evoke strong memories. As she brushed them against his fingertips, she explained: \u201cThis cable-knit might remind him of a grandma\u2019s jumper; this fluff, a child\u2019s teddy; this one, grass.\u201d I saw echoes of this image throughout the hospital in injured people reaching back or forwards to life beyond the war. People described their memories of peace in vivid terms, but when I asked what victory meant I was met with nonplussed stares. One soldier said: \u201cNo idea \u2026 but when it happens, I\u2019ve promised my wife I\u2019ll shave off my beard.\u201d His beard was long. His wife was perched on his hospital bed and asked if I\u2019d like to see how well her husband can lift his dumbbells with his one remaining arm.<\/p>\n
Dima (29) Illustration: Ella Baron\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
After Dima regained consciousness in the hospital, he phoned his mother to tell her that \u201ceverything was fine \u2013 just a few scratches\u201d. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t true,\u201d he tells me. \u201cThere was a big hole in my leg and in my ear and arm.\u201d He still can\u2019t sleep. \u201cMy nightmares are always the same. They\u2019re taking me from the hospital back to the trenches, and then I am above \u2013 I am the drone making the projectile drop that hits me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dima flies first-person view (FPV) drones so he knows how this looks. His psychologist tells him he might sleep better if he wasn\u2019t on his phone all night. But he likes watching videos on Instagram and YouTube \u2013 mostly bodycam footage of the war that, he explains, help him to understand the \u201csubtleties\u201d of his own memories: what he did, what he could have done. He tells me about his mentor, Matrovski, who made him stay down in the trench while he looked out to see if the Russians were still there. Matrovski was immediately shot in the neck and bled to death.<\/p>\n
The shard of shrapnel that buried itself in Dima\u2019s body when the drone projectile detonated is now sitting on his bedside table. He tells me: \u201cIt momentarily paralysed me from the bottom of my spine to the end of my extremities. I thought it had injured my spinal cord and I wouldn\u2019t be able to walk. I thought \u2018this is the end\u2019. But I started to touch my head to see if I had any blood. I didn\u2019t find any and I said to myself: \u2018I am alive, I am not dead.\u2019 I could hear the enemy drones watching. FPVs have a horrible squeaky sound \u2013 like Formula One [cars]. If it\u2019s high, then it\u2019s quiet. When it gets louder, then you worry. I could hear them watching so I lay very still and pretended to be dead. I heard them leave. Then I was screaming from the pain. I thought I would bleed to death.\u201d<\/p>\n
He survived, he says, because \u201cI am my mother\u2019s only child. When I joined the army she cried and so I\u2019d promised her that everything would be fine.\u201d She is a kindergarten teacher, \u201cthe kindest person in the world. She has brown hair and green eyes like mine. Always smiling \u2013 even when she\u2019s sad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olena (30) Illustration: Ella Baron\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
I ask Olena where home is. She tells me about the clouds in Luhansk. \u201cThey\u2019re really beautiful, like mountains because there aren\u2019t any tall buildings there. Home is where the sky has no missiles, just clouds and the sun and birds and planes \u2013 but not military, safe, with passengers. The most important thing is the feeling that you can look at the sky without being scared. After 2022, I had to again learn how to look at the sky without fear.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first time Olena was displaced by conflict was in 2014, when she was 19. She \u201cgot on a train to nowhere\u201d and wound up in Kyiv, searching through old Facebook friends for somewhere to stay. She rebuilt her life in Luhansk. She says: \u201cI loved my flat. The children\u2019s bedroom had pastel wallpaper with balloons. My husband and I built a big balcony and I pasted these stickers of pink peonies all over it. We had a great life, we didn\u2019t expect to have war \u2026 even more war. Then we started hearing explosions from the frontlines \u2026 we saw the first missiles in the sky, interceptions \u2013 the children were terrified.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the invasion happened, Olena and her family fled to Vinnytsia. She says that now \u201cI feel like I have two lives. Part of my soul is left there back in that life. So I\u2019m here, but at the same time I\u2019m there.\u201d When I ask her what she hopes for the future, she says: \u201cI don\u2019t see the future, for now. I live in the present day \u2026 I just think \u2018I woke up in the morning, thank God, I went to work, thank God. My children went to school, God thank you.\u2019\u201d She has portraits of her children tattooed on her arms. She shows me her other tattoos: a mandala, a daisy with a plaster, birds. \u201cThey\u2019re all connected to the war,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re like scars.\u201d<\/p>\n
I show her my tattoos, and some of my drawings. Olena likes drawing too. She shows me a photo of one of her paintings \u2013 a road leading to a little house on a hill covered with bright yellow wheat. The sky is dark blue, because, Olena says, \u201cit\u2019s stormy, like it\u2019s about to rain\u201d. She points to the single lit window of the house. \u201cI added this to be like hope.\u201d I ask if this drawing is of a real place where she lived. She says no. \u201cIt\u2019s an abstract place \u2013 a home in the heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roman (40) Illustration: Ella Baron\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
In 2022, Roman quit his job collecting parcels and joined a medical brigade collecting wounded and dead soldiers. He says that \u201csometimes the body parts were blown up into the trees\u201d.<\/p>\n
When the drone detonated, his legs didn\u2019t get that far. They ended up in the box next to him in the medical stabilisation centre, still with their shoes on. He says: \u201cI remember looking at my legs in the box and I was so scared when I realised that I couldn\u2019t get this part of my past back \u2013 that now my future would be very different. I was so sad to say goodbye to what was in the box \u2026 Then I realised it was too early to die. I hadn\u2019t said goodbye to my family, or finished the house that I\u2019d been building for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Roman started building the house many years ago, he\u2019d gone to the bank to take out a loan from a \u201cvery beautiful woman with white blond hair. I told her all about the house and she said: \u2018Maybe one day you\u2019ll show me.\u2019 So I took her number and invited her to coffee.\u201d Tanya and Roman married soon after and now have two children, Alexi, 12, and Yvan, 21. Their house is finally almost finished \u2013 \u201cwhite pillars and blue walls \u2013 only a few tiles on the roof still to complete \u2026 maybe also a swimming pool\u201d. He tells me how his family loved to go swimming in the sea in Odesa. \u201cWe used go all together. But if I imagine going back, I cannot understand one thing \u2013 how will I be able to go in the sea? Can you swim in a prosthesis?\u201d I don\u2019t know the answer but \u2013 after a long pause \u2013 Roman does: \u201cYvan goes to the gym. His muscles are even bigger than mine. He can bring me on his back into the sea. And I will swim with him. Then he\u2019ll take me back out of the water and put me on the chair, and I\u2019ll put the prostheses back on. That\u2019s how it will be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roman called his wife from the hospital to tell her that he\u2019d lost his legs but \u201cnot to worry: everything is fine\u201d. He said to her: \u201cNothing has changed. I don\u2019t want anything to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inna (42) & Tetiana (48) Illustration: Ella Baron\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Inna and Tetiana come to talk to me together, exchanging glances before every answer, sharing tissues and whispered encouragements. Tetiana\u2019s son, Valeria, and Inna\u2019s husband, Mykola, are prisoners of war in Russia. They were captured on the same day in May 2022. Valeria is 27 now. Inna struggles to remember her husband\u2019s age. She says it\u2019s because \u201cwe don\u2019t celebrate birthdays any more. When they were captured, everything stopped.\u201d But when I ask what Valeria and Mykola look like, Inna answers: \u201cNow or before?\u201d<\/p>\n
Inna and Tetiana wait at every prisoner exchange in the hope that their relatives will be among those released. When they\u2019re not, sometimes the soldiers who have been bring back news of them. That\u2019s how Inna and Tetiana know how different their loved ones now look \u2013 \u201cexhausted, so thin\u201d. For the first year of her husband\u2019s captivity, Inna struggled to eat. She says she\u2019s a bit better now; she\u2019s found Tetiana. \u201cWe have the same pain, we understand it.\u201d The women believe that they have a \u201cspiritual connection with their loved ones\u201d, that they \u201cmust stay strong and cry less so they may also feel our hope and prayers\u201d. Inna describes how her husband comes to check on her in her dreams.<\/p>\n
Inna says she likes to picture sitting with her husband in their garden back in Mariupol. Mykola liked to grow flowers there, \u201cwild forest flowers \u2013 I don\u2019t even know where he got those seeds. At the time I didn\u2019t even like them! But now nothing would make me happier.\u201d Tetiana says she also likes to picture Valeria \u201csomewhere in nature \u2013 a field of white chamomile with the sun shining really bright \u2026 birdsong, fresh air.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neither Inna nor Tetiana have had any direct contact with their relatives for three years. If they could talk, Inna tells me she\u2019d say \u201cthat I love him \u2013 that we\u2019re waiting\u201d. Tetiana adds: \u201cWe\u2019re waiting. We\u2019re definitely going to wait.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tetiana (66) Illustration: Ella Baron\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Tetiana cries silently throughout our conversation. She doesn\u2019t want to stop or skip any questions; she always looks me directly in the eye. Her son Maksym was born in 1995, the same year as me. He was killed fighting in Donetsk on 8 May 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not possible to describe the burden of the pain I\u2019m bearing,\u201d says Tetiana. \u201cI think about him every day; when I wake up, when I go to sleep. Sometimes when I\u2019m walking and I see a young man who resembles mine \u2013 tall, gentle, strong \u2013 I think \u2018oh\u2019, because I had once such a boy.\u201d She says her grief is \u201clike the evening sky, like twilight \u2013 there\u2019s still some light there, and the light is all Maksym\u201d.<\/p>\n
Tetiana was born in Russia and came to Ukraine in 1974. She says they\u2019re a railway family. \u201cI worked there for 40 years. It\u2019s where I met my husband. We wanted Maksym to join the railway too, but even from his childhood he always dreamed of joining the military.\u201d As a boy, Maksym played zarnitsa in the woods. It\u2019s an old Soviet war game, and the name translates from Russian as \u201cheat lightning\u201d. \u201cThis is how he will remain for ever for me,\u201d she says. \u201cRunning through the woods. There\u2019s a photo of his dead body which his commander took. I still haven\u2019t looked at it: I can\u2019t. Let him remain alive for me, for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was \u201calways a military man \u2013 he loved his country\u201d, but she says he was gentle too. In the trenches, he\u2019d feed the lost cats and send her photos of them. She says he\u2019d call to say: \u201cMum, don\u2019t worry. Everything\u2019s going to be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dmytro (43) & Petrov (40) Illustration: Ella Baron\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Petrov says he and his older brother, Dmytro, have been \u201cmaking little models of soldiers together since childhood, and conducting fake wars. Then we grew up and had a different kind of war.\u201d Dmytro says that \u201cin the war, we were always together\u201d. They were together when the drone detonated under their car, killing the other two soldiers with them. The brothers are now recuperating from their injuries in the same hospital, in different wards. I talk to them separately, but each brother tells me mostly about the other.<\/p>\n
Petrov says that when the drone detonated, \u201cI felt a very strong burning sensation and I was screaming. My brother was screaming that he was injured too and I was so happy that he was screaming because it meant he was alive.\u201d Dmytro says: \u201cI heard my brother\u2019s voice and I calmed down. It probably all happened very quickly, but it felt like time stopped. When I realised that Petrov was seriously injured in all four limbs \u2013 how much blood he was losing \u2013 I knew that I had to provide medical aid for him or he would die. I\u2019ve been on the frontline for a long time. I\u2019ve tied a lot of tourniquets. So in this situation I\u2019m not panicking. I\u2019m calm. I tied the tourniquets. But I was worried about him.\u201d Petrov says Dmytro worries too much, \u201cbut it\u2019s natural, I\u2019m his little brother.\u201d Dmytro says: \u201cI\u2019ve been protective of Petrov since picking him up from kindergarten. He\u2019s not weak, he\u2019s very strong. But I have to look after him. He\u2019s my little brother.\u201d<\/p>\n
They are now healing well, although Dmytro says he\u2019s worried about Petrov\u2019s hands. His doctors say he\u2019ll never regain full movement. Dmytro says his brother has \u201cgolden hands: whatever he likes to do with them, he does so well. He\u2019s very creative: a sculptor, he plays the guitar.\u201d Petrov says it was Dmytro\u2019s guitar \u2013 his brother bought it but got bored after learning one song and quit, so Petrov learned to play instead.<\/p>\n
Petrov hopes the war has left him with enough movement in his hands to go back to making sculptures, and there\u2019s one sitting on his bedside table in the hospital. It\u2019s a phone stand with the insignia of his village\u2019s brigade, which he insists on giving to me. I\u2019m concerned that without it Petrov won\u2019t be able to hold his phone, as one hand is swathed in bandages and the other sutured to his midriff. When I ask the doctors about this they explain: \u201cTo encourage the skin grafts on his hands to take, we connect the hand to the midriff where the blood supply is better.\u201d They say Petrov spends a lot of his time on his phone, mostly video calling Dmytro in the hospital ward downstairs.<\/p>\n
Valentyn (51) Illustration: Ella Baron\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
It was a rainy dawn and Valentyn had been sweeping for mines; dawn so as not to be seen, rain because it makes it harder for the drones to fly. He tells me that he never touched the mine \u2013 it reacted to the electromagnetic field of his body with a flash that, weeks later, he still can\u2019t get out of his eyes. He holds up the bandaged stumps of his arms. \u201cFor this hand there is no hope. But for the other \u2013 one finger is still alive.\u201d He displays the prosthetic he\u2019s been given to hold a spoon. \u201cThe next device must be to hold a fishing rod.\u201d With his one remaining finger, Valentyn mimes reeling in a fishing line. Valentyn\u2019s grandpa taught him to fish and he still goes to the same spot on the Dnipro River. \u201cIt\u2019s very beautiful, very calm. Just trees by the river. I like to go there alone. If I go with my friends they get drunk and scare away the fish.\u201d<\/p>\n
Natalii (55) Illustration: Ella Baron\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
I meet Natalii at a women\u2019s support group in Vinnytsia for refugees from Kherson. Today, they\u2019re making flowers out of colourful pipe cleaners. The windows of the community room are filled with flowers that Natallii grows in little recycled pots. She talks about her garden back in Kherson, where she lived before the invasion: 200 sq metres filled with apricot trees, grapevines and flowers; her favourites were the pink roses. She shows me photos that a friend who stayed behind took recently. Their house has been utterly destroyed, but the roses in the garden are still blooming. Now Natalii lives with her family in a small apartment in Vinnytsia. \u201cThere\u2019s no garden but a good window. For my birthday I was given a huge bouquet, and there were still some roots! Now I have seven big bushes in water on the floor in front of the window.\u201d Natalii says her family think she\u2019s mad, apart from her nine-year-old granddaughter, Anya, who also has green fingers. Anya\u2019s father \u2013 Natalii\u2019s son \u2013 always buys her flowers from the supermarket when he comes back from the front.<\/p>\n
For Natalii, \u201cthe flowers are like a memory from home \u2026 peace is the memory of the life that we were living there. Here, we are just waiting. My soul is in the garden back home in Kherson.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Natalii talks, the other women twist their pipe cleaners into flower ornaments. Svitlana, 68, also a refugee from Kherson, has hands that tremble so violently Natalii helps her with the fiddly bits. I tell her about this project, and she says: \u201cNo picture could capture what we have lived through, what it is to have everything, to be together with all your family in your home, and then be living by the side of the road.\u201d It\u2019s a fair point.<\/p>\n
This project, facilitated by M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res, will be exhibited at The Arcade at Bush House, King\u2019s College London, in September<\/p>\n
About the author<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/480.png\")
Ella Baron Photograph: supplied for byline<\/p>\n
Ella Baron<\/a> is a political cartoonist at the Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Valentyn Illustration: Ella Baron\/The GuardianElla Baron Photograph: Ella Baron In Ukraine, many people affected by the conflict are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-292711","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114918367237869026","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Ella](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/465.png\")
Ella Baron Photograph: Ella Baron<\/p>\n