This girl has already become one of the symbols of the war in Ukraine
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The war in Ukraine is an armed conflict that has developed very quickly. It has been going on for over two months, and those who are suffering the most are civilians. An engineer in Kiev published photos of his daughter some time ago. This one impersonates a child of war — with a lollipop and a shotgun, which symbolizes a trampled childhood. Here’s what’s really behind the series.
Alexei Kirichenko is a Ukrainian engineer. Before the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the man ran his company in Kiev. He lived in a house in the suburbs of the capital with his wife and three children. In addition to his work, he found fulfillment in photography.
The photo session he made with his daughter was created on February 22, 2022 — two days before the Russian invasion began. Alexei’s goal was to draw attention to his country’s threat of potential war. The child posed with a lollipop and a shotgun — on the one hand we are dealing with innocence, on the other with the nightmare of war.
As Alexei admits, the shotgun in the photo belongs to him, and his daughter can’t shoot. She is 9 years old. At the time of the shooting, the weapon was not loaded. When the engineer from Kiev published the photos on Facebook, they began to spread through various groups. They were removed from groups supervised by Russians.
When war broke out 2 days after the shoot, Alexei enlisted in the army, and in the meantime, his photos began to spread even wider online. Some people, looking at the artistic photos of the engineer, believed them to be a true picture of the war in Ukraine, hence Alexei decided to explain the background of the session.
