When someone posted on Twitter asking how artists, specifically fiction writers, could continue to create while bad things happen in the world, the responses were numerous. While I haven't been flooded with the creative spark recently, I have done some work, and thought I'd share a few of the many things artists around the world, and in Ukraine, are doing to protest the heinous Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Via France's Observer: metal sculptors have made barricades on roads, soldered from girders.
'Everyone is doing what they can to defend our city, our country'
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, beginning a war that, to some Ukrainians, felt improbable until the first explosions went off. The resistance effort was immediate.
On February 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged citizens across the country to mobilize against Russia’s full-scale invasion. Thousands of people lined up to enlist in the military.
Meanwhile, everyday citizens were told to take up arms to defend their cities. The Ukrainian defence ministry encouraged residents of a Kyiv suburb to “make Molotov cocktails” and “destroy the occupier.”
Analysts say the Russian military may have been caught off guard by Ukraine’s strong resistance. Bodia said that everyone has become involved in the war effort.
Journalists are also stepping beyond 'objective' lines, as The Guardian reports:
Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at Channel One, burst on to the set of the live broadcast of the nightly news on Monday evening, shouting: “Stop the war. No to war.”
She also held a sign saying: “Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.” It was signed in English: “Russians against the war.”
The news anchor continued to read from her teleprompter speaking louder in an attempt to drown out Ovsyannikova, but her protest could be seen and heard for several seconds before the channel switched to a recorded segment.
Ovsyannikova also released a pre-recorded video via the OVD-Info human rights group in which she expressed her shame at working for Channel One and spreading “Kremlin propaganda.”
“Regrettably, for a number of years, I worked on Channel One and worked on Kremlin propaganda, I am very ashamed of this right now. Ashamed that I was allowed to tell lies from the television screen. Ashamed that I allowed the zombification of the Russian people. We were silent in 2014 when this was just beginning. We did not go out to protest when the Kremlin poisoned [opposition leader Alexei] Navalny,” she said.
“We are just silently watching this anti-human regime. And now the whole world has turned away from us and the next 10 generations won’t be able to clean themselves from the shame of this fratricidal war.”