The Guardian Opinion cartoonist reports on lives for ever changed by conflict
In Ukraine, many people affected by the conflict are being treated and supported by Médecins Sans Frontières (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.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I’ve 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’s nothing left to draw of an amputated limb but memories – the same could be said for a lost home or relative. These things are beyond a camera’s reach, which I think gives you licence to reach for a pencil.