A striking image. We see on the sill of a window of a ruined house, a 9-year-old girl, a lollipop in her mouth and wearing a braid in the colors of her country, Ukraine. But on closer inspection, this Ukrainian woman holds an automatic weapon and stares at the horizon, as if waiting for the imminent arrival of the Russians in her village. It is however not a fighter, but a staging.
However, in a few days, this photograph went viral and was notably retweeted by the former Polish President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, as spotted by HuffPost.
A tweet accompanied by this caption: “Don’t tell him please that tougher sanctions would cost Europe too much!”
But contrary to what it may suggest, this image does not represent a child soldier.
Just don’t tell her please that tougher sanctions would be too expensive for Europe! pic.twitter.com/dJUGPMzPZX
—Donald Tusk (@donaldtuskEPP) March 11, 2022
Similarly, it was taken some time before the Russian offensive in Ukraine, on February 24, as explained by the author of this photograph, who is none other than the girl’s father.
Showing ‘what Ukraine could look like’
The author, Oleksii Kyrychenko, is an engineer from Kiev and above all a photography enthusiast. Two days before the start of the conflict, he decided to stage his own 9-year-old daughter.
On Facebook, this father says he wanted to show “what Ukraine could look like in the near future”. However, the man insists that his daughter does not know how to use a weapon and that obviously the one in the photo was not loaded.
The photograph was posted on Facebook after the start of the war against Russia. “I posted the photo in a Ukrainian Facebook group of cactus enthusiasts,” says Oleksii Kyrychenko. Stating that “all of a sudden she went around the world and became a meme.”
Moreover, this father especially wishes to specify that this photo allowed the world to see “the true face of the Russian invasion”. Nevertheless, the photograph of his daughter was quickly censored from all the Facebook pages where he had been able to post it, due to the Russian nationality of their administrator.