The mysterious artist Banksy has confirmed his authorship of seven pieces of graffiti created in Ukraine, ending week-long speculation about their creator.
In a video on his Instagram, the British artist, known for his street art with strong social messaging, shared the process of creating the graffiti in several towns and villages that suffered from the Russian invasion, as well as in the Ukrainian capital.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1593518118487445504
In the village of Horenka, which was destroyed by the Russian Army in its unsuccessful attempt to capture Kyiv in February-March 2022, Banksy painted a man taking a bath on the side of an almost-destroyed building.
In the capital Kyiv, near the city’s central Maidan Nezalezhnosti, he spraypainted two children swinging on an anti-tank hedgehog as if on a swing set, and used an image of a penis that someone less talented had left on the wall of a historic building in the center of Kyiv to add an armored truck with a Russian Z and Russian soldiers to it.
In Borodianka, Banksy painted a boy throwing a man who resembles Putin, a judo practitioner, to the mat with a judo move and a gymnast doing a handstand on the rubble of a building destroyed by Russian troops.
Another gymnast, but on a hole from a Russian shell appeared in Irpin.
In Hostomel, Banksy painted a woman in a gas mask and with a fire extinguisher.
Banksy’s graffiti around Kyiv is the artist’s first public work in a year of silence. But earlier, in March, shortly after the full-blown invasion of the Russian Army into Ukraine, a reproduction of one of Banksy’s most famous anti-war works CND Soldiers was sold at an auction, and the proceeds from its sale of more than $100,000 were sent to the Kyiv Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital.
The owner of the graffiti wished to remain anonymous, so it could very well be Banksy himself. He, as always, is silent.
