The faces of Russian zombies in Kherson

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An artist took advantage of his long confinement during the occupation to give his vision of the neighbors who joined the invading forces

Today is a happy day in the lives of Mikhail Ray and Anne as they celebrate two years as husband and wife. Much of this marriage was spent at war and under Russian occupation. They go out to celebrate the anniversary at Freedom Square in Kherson, the place where thousands of civilians gather to receive humanitarian aid. They go hand in hand and walk with both hands above the ground, happy for their love, for the end of the occupation and for being able to walk without fear of being arrested. Mikhail takes his phone out of his pocket and shows what he’s been doing at his house for the past nine months. It could have cost you dear. Many of their neighbors and friends decided to leave the city in the first days of the conflict. He stayed and has documented the daily occupation with a diary of his photo collages and reflections that will soon become a book.

“When the war started, the first thing I did was contact my Russian friends and tell them that they were bombing us and that their troops had entered Kherson. In general, there was no response, although a few denied this. They didn’t believe me. They acted like real zombies, brainwashed by the Kremlin,” artist Mikhail Ray recalls the critical days in late February when Russia launched its invasion and hoisted the tricolor flag on Freedom Square. The Russians had blacklisted him for his interventions in television programs and posts on social networks, so he chose “to go out as little as possible. The pro-Russian neighbors might betray you and you would disappear. There there have been many such cases,” he recalls.

The long hours of confinement resulted in the “Kherson Diaries” series, which contains four shocking photographs that “show Russian faces with war symbols such as the Z or V sewn to cover their eyes and mouths. They have shown me that they do not want to listen and that they are afraid to speak because there is no freedom of speech in Russia. They are portraits of zombie Russian patriots.” Those images have been exhibited in Berlin and Kiev and have become icons of the struggle against the occupation. It is a hyper-realistic work that, on seeing it for the first time, wonders if anyone has staple-based symbols really sewn onto the protagonists’ faces.

The ‘Diary of the Occupation’ covers the first days of uncertainty, goes through the long months of isolation without internet connection and ends with the last moments of the Russian presence when, just a month after the annexation referendum, they announced the evacuation of 10,000 citizens per day to the other bank of the Dnieper for a week. “The first question I had was ‘why 60,000?’ I think there are only 5,000 left if we add in the pensioners and the workers, they created panic, scared people with bombings and street fights, but even then the citizens did not choose to go to the Russian Federation or Crimea. all knew evacuation was a one-way ticket.” Ray has been clear from day one that “this is not a war between Russia and Ukraine. It is a war of values, of generations, a war between the past and the future.

Mikhail is a familiar face in town and is greeted when he passes by in Freedom Square, but today he only has eyes for his wife. The group trying to cheer up the long queues of people waiting for humanitarian aid plays one of their favorite songs. They cuddle. They close their eyes and dream of a future in Ukraine, not in the Russian Federation. They kiss.

Every day that passes since Kherson’s liberation reveals new episodes of torture during the nine-month occupation. The Ukrainian public prosecutor’s office reported the discovery of bullets and electrocution machines in the torture chambers.

The liberation of the city has moved the clashes to the east, where “fierce fighting” is taking place, according to Volodimir Zelensky. From Zaporizhia, where Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for the bombing of the nuclear power plant that took place this weekend, to Donbas, the eastern front is intensifying in these first days of winter.

In Kherson, the evacuation of the elderly and victims of Russian attacks has already started, an operation that will extend to neighboring Mikolaiv.

Source: La Verdad

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