In the liberated city of Kherson: more important things to do than be afraid

Dhe Russians aren’t shooting right now, and Yulia spreads out her tiles. She laid them side by side on a small bench outside the block. Yulia is a painter and the tiles are her paintings. She paints on tiles because she actually wanted to renovate the bathroom with Ljoscha. But then the Russians captured Cherson in March. They had other concerns and a few tiles remained. The bathroom became an air raid shelter because it has no windows and is protected inside the block. “The principle of two walls,” says Yulia.

Because she had tiles, she started drawing on them with felt-tip pens, and even one of her first pictures shows what the principle of the two walls is: the Russians are bombing, and everyone is huddled in the bathroom. Her son Stas in the tub, Yulia on the carpet. You can’t see Ljoscha because she asked him to take the photo that she will copy when the shooting stops. You can see her trying to type something on her cell phone. The same phone she’s holding now, along with her energy drink. The phone has two frightened cartoon eyes on the back. The energy drink is anyone, no matter which one. Before the war, Yulia drank only “Green Energy”, but now there is no such thing. So she takes what comes.

Everyone was talking about Boucha

Now she sprays paint over her pictures in front of the block. You can’t do that indoors because of the solvents. And earlier it wasn’t possible outside either, because of the Russians. So it’s only now. Yulia sprays, then waves the cloud of paint away, then sprays again.

In the first weeks of the war she also painted The Snow Eaters. She had heard that people in Mariupol had to melt snow for cooking because the siege was so merciless, and she wanted to paint that. But how do you draw people gathering snow to eat? The internet turned up nothing, so Stas had to photograph them bending over, which became her template. This is how she painted the people of Mariupol, and at the same time it frightened her that the person she was painting was herself.

In early April, they heard how the Russians were killing civilians. Everyone was talking about Butscha, about people who had been shot and tied up on the side of the road, and Yulia knew: It could also be us. Ljoscha, Stas, i. When she heard at Easter that a young couple and their baby had just been killed by a bomb in Odessa, she drew a dragon breathing fire at a block of flats. “It’s the dragon of Russian fairy tales,” says Yulia. “We were very scared at the time. But then we got used to it. We had to get food and waiting in line distracted us.”

The Russian’s hands were shaking

Back then, in the first weeks of the war, the Russians broke into Ljoscha’s studio for the first time. He had taught himself to tattoo long before the war, and rented a room in the switchboard house to work. The Russians didn’t destroy much the first time, only the door was broken. The second time, just as he was pushing his bike down the hall, he heard footsteps. He turned and a Russian aimed at him. “The keys and go away,” said the Russian. “Let me take the needles and the colors with me,” answered Ljoscha. “Get lost, I have orders to shoot,” said the Russian. Ljoscha gave him the keys and left. He saw the Russian’s hands trembling. “They were probably scared,” says Yulia. “Before our partisans. That’s why he was shaking.”