In the stories of distant wars, especially distant in time, one word struck me. He also entered – in the long, painful interminable post-war periods – in the language of bureaucracy. It ended up on signs in public places, on means of transport. He often approached the more generic word “veterans”. I am referring to the word “mutilated”. It indicates who is not just a veteran, but returns from the war with a sign of violence on him. Written on the survivor’s body is the laceration, the wound, and more precisely a lack – which is not abstract.
Thus, contemplating this photograph, referring to the Ukrainian soldier, who seems to fix our gaze, mute, means becoming aware once again of what war destroys and tears apart. Not just homes, hospitals, schools, steel mills, cities. He destroys and tears apart the bodies; he can let them live but marked. Mutilated, in fact. To hand over a legacy of pain that can be read in the bodies, in their – visible and desperate – shortcomings.