Viktor Mikhalev shows roses transformed from weapons and ammunition into flowers of war standing in a workshop in his house in Donetsk, in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Photo / AP
Viktor Mikhalev shows roses transformed from weapons and ammunition into flowers of war standing in a workshop in his house in Donetsk, in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Photo / AP
A blacksmith in the Russian-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk is practically beating swords into ploughshares, and turning one man’s trash into treasures.
Viktor Mikhalev takes weapons and ammunition and produces what he calls the flowers of war.
Mikhalev, who trained as a welder, lives and works in a housewhose fence and door are decorated with forged flowers and grapes.
In his workshop are piles of half-burnt machine guns and shells from the war’s front line.
Friends and acquaintances bring them as raw material for his art.
Donetsk, the centre of Ukraine’s industrial heartland of the Donbas, has been engulfed by fighting ever since the Moscow-backed separatist rebellion erupted in April 2014, weeks after Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
Viktor Mikhalev shows roses transformed from weapons and ammunition into flowers of war standing in a workshop in his house in Donetsk, in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Photo / AP
The Kremlin has made capturing the entire region a key goal of its invasion that began a year ago, and it illegally annexed Donetsk along with three other regions in eastern and southern Ukraine in September, declaring them part of Russia.
